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THE  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


X 


F 


THE  NORMANS  IN 
EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


BY 

CHARLES  HOMER  HASKINS 

GURNEY  PROFESSOR  OF  HISTORY  AND  POLITICAL  SCIENCE 
IN  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
<$bz  Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,  1915,  BY  CHARLES  HOMER  HASKINS 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED  INCLUDING  THE  RIGHT  TO  REPRODUCE 
THIS  BOOK  OR  PARTS  THEREOF  IN  ANY  FORM 


Published  October  iqif 


TO  MY  WIFE 


PREFACE 


THE  eight  lectures  which  are  here  published 
were  delivered  before  the  Lowell  Institute  in 
February,  1915,  and  at  the  University  of  Cali- 
fornia the  following  July,  and  it  has  seemed  best  to 
print  them  in  the  form  in  which  they  were  prepared  for 
a general  audience.  Their  purpose  is  not  so  much  to 
furnish  an  outline  of  the  annals  of  Norman  history  as 
to  place  the  Normans  in  relation  to  their  time  and  to 
indicate  the  larger  features  of  their  work  as  founders 
and  organizers  of  states  and  contributors  to  European 
culture.  Biographical  and  narrative  detail  has  accord- 
ingly been  subordinated  in  the  effort  to  give  a general 
view  of  Norman  achievement  in  France,  in  England, 
and  in  Italy.  Various  aspects  of  Norman  history  have 
been  treated  with  considerable  fullness  by  historians, 
but,  so  far  as  I am  aware,  no  connected  account  of  the 
whole  subject  has  yet  been  attempted  from  this  point  of 
view.  This  fact,  it  is  hoped,  may  justify  the  publication 
of  these  lectures,  as  well  as  explain  the  omission  of  many 
topics  which  would  naturally  be  treated  in  an  extended 
narrative. 

This  book  rests  partly  upon  the  writings  of  the  various 
scholars  enumerated  in  the  bibliographical  note  at  the 


viii 


PREFACE 


end  of  each  chapter,  partly  upon  prolonged  personal 
investigations,  the  results  of  which  have  appeared  in 
various  special  periodicals  and  will,  in  part,  soon  be 
collected  into  a volume  of  Studies  in  Norman  Institu- 
tions. When  it  seemed  appropriate  in  the  text,  I have 
felt  at  liberty  to  draw  freely  upon  the  more  general  por- 
tions of  these  articles,  leaving  more  special  and  critical 
problems  for  discussion  elsewhere. 

I wish  to  thank  the  authorities  of  the  Lowell  Institute 
and  the  University  of  California,  and  to  acknowledge 
helpful  criticism  from  my  colleague  Professor  William  S. 
Ferguson  and  from  Mr.  George  W.  Robinson,  Secretary 
of  the  Graduate  School  of  Arts  and  Sciences  of  Harvard 
University.  My  indebtedness  to  Norman  scholars  and 
Norman  scholarship  is  deeper  and  more  personal  than 
any  list  of  their  names  and  writings  can  indicate. 

Charles  H.  Haskins. 

Cambridge,  Mass. 

August,  1915. 


CONTENTS 


I.  NORMANDY  AND  ITS  PLACE  IN  HISTORY  i 

II.  THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  26 

III.  NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  52 

IV.  THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  85 

V.  NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  116 

VI.  NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  148 

VII.  THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  192 

VIII.  THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  218 

INDEX  251 


/ 


THE  NORMANS  IN 
EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


i 

NORMANDY  AND  ITS  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

IN  June,  1911,  at  Rouen,  Normandy  celebrated  the 
one-thousandth  anniversary  of  its  existence.  Dec- 
orated with  the  grace  and  simplicity  of  which  only 
a French  city  is  capable,  the  Norman  capital  received 
with  equal  cordiality  the  descendants  of  the  conquerors 
and  the  conquered  — Norwegians  and  Swedes,  Danes 
of  Denmark  and  Danes  of  Iceland,  Normans  of  Nor- 
mandy and  of  England,  of  Sicily  and  of  Canada.  Four 
Norwegian  students  accomplished  the  journey  from 
their  native  fjords  in  an  open  Viking  boat,  having  set 
ashore  early  in  the  voyage  a comrade  who  had  so  far 
fallen  away  from  the  customs  of  his  ancestors  as  to 
sleep  under  a blanket.  From  the  United  States  bold 
Scandinavians,  aided  by  the  American  Express  Com- 
pany, brought  from  Minnesota  the  Kensington  rune 
stone,  which  purports  to  prove  the  presence  of  Norse  ex- 
plorers in  the  northwest  one  hundred  and  thirty  years 
before  the  landfall  of  Columbus.  A congress  of  Norman 
history  listened  for  nearly  a week  in  five  simultaneous 
sections  to  communications  on  every  phase  of  the  Nor- 


2 NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


man  past.  There  was  Norman  music  in  the  streets, 
there  were  Norman  plays  at  the  theatres,  Norman 
mysteries  in  the  cathedral  close.  Banquet  followed  ban- 
quet and  toast  followed  toast,  till  the  cider  of  Normandy 
paled  before  the  champagne  of  France.  Finally  a great 
pageant,  starting,  like  the  city,  from  the  river-bank,  un- 
rolled the  vast  panorama  of  Norman  history  through 
streets  whose  very  names  reecho  its  great  figures  — 
Rollo  and  his  Norse  companions  arriving  in  their  Viking 
ships,  the  dukes  his  successors,  William  Longsword, 
Richard  the  Fearless,  Robert  the  Magnificent,  William 
the  Conqueror,  the  sons  of  Tancred  of  Hauteville  who 
drove  the  paynim  from  Sicily,  and  that  other  Tancred 
who  planted  the  banner  of  the  cross  on  the  walls  of 
Jerusalem,  all  with  their  knights  and  heralds  and  men 
at  arms,  followed  by  another  pageant  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  Normandy  in  the  arts  of  peace.  And  on  the 
last  evening  the  great  abbey-church  of  Saint-Ouen 
burnt  red  fire  for  the  first  time  in  its  history  till  the 
whole  mass  glowed  and  every  statue  and  storied  niche 
stood  out  with  some  clear,  sharp  bit  of  the  Norman  past, 
while  its  lantern-tower,  “the  crown  of  Normandy," 
shone  out  over  the  city  and  the  river  which  are  the 
centre  of  Norman  history  and  where  this  day  the  dukes 
wore  again  their  crown. 

In  this  transitory  world  the  thousandth  anniversary 
of  anything  is  sufficiently  rare  to  challenge  attention, 
even  in  an  age  which  is  rapidly  becoming  hardened  to 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY  3 

celebrations.  Of  the  events  commemorated  in  1915  the 
discovery  of  the  Pacific  is  only  four  hundred  years  old, 
the  signing  of  the  Great  Charter  but  seven  hundred. 
The  oldest  American  university  has  celebrated  only  its 
two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary,  the  oldest  Euro- 
pean only  its  eight-hundredth.  Even  those  infrequent 
commemorations  which  carry  us  back  a thousand  years 
or  more,  like  the  millenary  of  King  Alfred  or  the  sixteen- 
hundredth  Constantinian  jubilee  of  1913,  are  usually  re- 
minders of  great  men  or  great  events  rather  than,  as  in 
the  case  of  Normandy,  the  completion  of  a millennium 
of  continuous  historical  development.  So  far  as  I can 
now  recollect,  the  only  parallel  is  that  of  Iceland,  which 
rounded  out  its  thousand  years  with  the  dignity  of  a 
new  constitution  in  1874.  Of  about  the  same  age,  Ice- 
land also  resembles  Normandy  in  being  the  creation  of 
the  Norse  sea-rovers,  an  outpost  of  the  Vikings  in  the 
west,  as  Normandy  was  an  outpost  in  the  south.  Of 
the  two,  Iceland  is  perhaps  the  more  individual,  as  it 
certainly  has  been  the  more  faithful  to  its  Scandinavian 
traditions,  but  the  conditions  which  have  enabled  it  to 
retain  its  early  characteristics  have  also  isolated  it  from 
the  broader  currents  of  the  world’s  history.  Normandy, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  drawn  at  once  into  the  full  tide 
of  European  politics  and  became  itself  a founder  of  new 
states,  an  imperial  power,  a colonizer  of  lands  beyond 
the  seas,  the  mother  of  a greater  Normandy  in  England, 
in  Sicily,  and  in  America. 


4 NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

At  home  and  abroad  the  history  of  Normandy  is  a 
record  of  rich  and  varied  achievement  — of  war  and 
conquest  and  feats  of  arms,  but  also  of  law  and  govern- 
ment and  religion,  of  agriculture,  industry,  trade,  and 
exploration,  of  literature  and  science  and  art.  It  takes 
us  back  to  Rollo  and  William  of  the  Long  Sword,  to  the 
Vikings  and  the  Crusaders,  to  the  conquerors  of  England 
and  Sicily,  to  masterful  prelates  of  the  feudal  age  like 
Odo  of  Bayeux  and  Thomas  Becket;  it  brings  us  down 
to  the  admirals  and  men  of  art  and  letters  of  the  Grand 
Silcle , — Tourville  and  DuQuesne,  Poussin,  Malherbe, 
and  the  great  Corneille,  — to  Charlotte  Corday  and  the 
days  of  the  Terror,  and  to  the  painters  and  scholars  and 
men  of  letters  of  the  nineteenth  century,  — G6ricault 
and  Millet,  Laplace  and  Leopold  Delisle,  Flaubert  and 
Maupassant  and  Albert  Sorel.  It  traces  the  laborious 
clearing  of  ancient  forests,  the  rude  processes  of  prim- 
itive agriculture,  the  making  of  Norman  cider  and  the 
breeding  of  the  Norman  horse,  the  vicissitudes  of  trade 
in  fish  and  marten-skins,  in  pottery,  cheap  cottons,  and 
strong  waters,  the  development  of  a centre  of  fashion 
like  Trouville  or  centres  of  war  and  commerce  like  Cher- 
bourg and  Havre.  It  describes  the  slow  building  of 
monasteries  and  cathedrals  and  the  patient  labors  of 
priests  and  monks,  as  well  as  the  conquest  of  the  Cana- 
ries, the  colonization  of  Canada,  and  the  exploration  of 
the  Great  West.  A thousand  years  of  such  history  are 
well  worth  a week  of  commemoration  and  retrospect. 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY  5 

To  the  American  traveller  who  wends  his  way  toward 
Paris  from  Cherbourg,  Havre,  or  Dieppe,  the  first  im- 
pression of  Normandy  is  that  of  a country  strikingly 
like  England.  There  are  the  same  high  chalk  cliffs,  the 
same  “little  grey  church  on  the  windy  shore,”  often  the 
same  orchards  and  hedges,  poppies  and  roses.  There  are 
trees  and  wide  stretches  of  forest  as  in  few  other  parts  of 
France,  placid,  full-brimmed  rivers  and  quiet  country- 
sides, and  everywhere  the  rich  green  of  meadow  and 
park  and  pasture,  that  vivid  green  of  the  north  which 
made  Alphonse  Daudet  at  Oxford  shudder,  “Green 
rheumatism,”  as  he  thought  of  the  sun-browned  plains 
and  sharp,  bare  hills  of  his  own  Provence.  Normandy 
is  brighter  than  England,  with  a dash  more  of  color  in 
the  landscape,  but  its  skies  are  not  sunny  and  its  air 
breathes  the  mists  of  the  sea  and  the  chill  of  the  north. 
There  is  a grey  tone  also,  of  grey  towns  and  grey  sea, 
matched  by  an  austere  and  sombre  element  in  the  Nor- 
man character,  which,  if  it  does  not  take  its  pleasures 
sadly  after  the  manner  of  Taine’s  Englishmen,  is  prone 
to  take  them  soberly,  and  by  an  element  of  melancholy, 
a sense  of  le  glas  des  choses  mortes,  which  Flaubert  called 
the  melancholy  of  the  northern  barbarians.  The  Nor- 
man landscape  also  gives  us  the  feeling  of  finish  and  re- 
pose and  the  sentiment  of  a rich  past,  not  merely  in  the 
obvious  externals  of  crumbling  wall  and  ivied  tower, 
but  in  that  deeper  sense  of  a people  bound  from  im- 
memorial antiquity  to  the  soil,  adapted  to  every  local 


6 NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


difference  through  long  generations  of  use  and  wont,  in 
an  intimate  union  of  man  and  nature  which  makes  the 
Norman  inseparable  from  his  land.  All  this,  too,  is 
English,  but  English  with  a difference.  Just  as,  in 
Henry  James’s  phrase,  the  English  landscape  is  a 
landlord’s  landscape,  and  the  French  a peasant’s,  so 
the  mairie  and  the  prefecture,  the  public  garden  and 
the  public  band,  the  cafe  and  the  ever-open  church,  the 
workman’s  blouse  and  the  grandam’s  bonnet,  remind  us 
continually  that  we  are  in  a Latin  country  and  on  our 
way  to  Paris. 

Now  the  history  of  Normandy  reflects  this  twofold 
impression  of  the  traveller:  it  faces  toward  England  and 
the  sea,  but  it  belongs  to  France  and  the  land.  Open  to 
the  outer  world  by  the  great  valley  of  the  Seine  and  the 
bays  and  inlets  of  its  long  coast-line,  Normandy  was 
never  drawn  to  the  sea  in  the  same  degree  as  its  neigh- 
bor Brittany,  nor  isolated  in  any  such  measure  from  the 
life  of  the  Continent.  Where  the  shore  is  low,  meadow 
and  field  run  to  the  water’s  edge;  where  it  is  high,  its 
line  is  relatively  little  broken,  so  that  the  streams  gener- 
ally rush  to  the  sea  down  short,  steep  valleys,  up  which 
wheeze  the  trains  which  connect  the  little  seaside  ports 
and  watering-places  with  the  modern  world  within.  In 
spite  of  the  trade  of  its  rivers  and  its  ports,  in  spite  of 
the  growth  of  industry  along  its  streams,  Normandy  is 
still  primarily  an  agricultural  country,  rooted  deep  in 
the  rich  soil  of  an  ancient  past,  a country  of  horses  and 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY  7 

cattle,  of  butter  and  cheese  and  cider  and  the  kindly 
fruits  of  the  earth ; and  the  continuity  of  its  history  rests 
upon  the  land  itself.  “Behind  the  shore  and  even  upon 
it,”  says  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  “the  ancient  cumulative 
force  of  the  interior  has  reacted  against  the  sea.  There 
an  old  and  rich  civilization  has  subsisted  in  its  entirety, 
founded  on  the  soil,  through  whose  power  have  resisted 
and  endured  the  speech,  the  traditions,  and  the  peoples 
of  ancient  times.”  1 Conquered  and  colonized  by  the  sea- 
rovers  of  the  north,  the  land  of  Normandy  was  able  to 
absorb  its  conquerors  into  the  law,  the  language,  the  re- 
ligion, and  the  culture  of  France,  where,  as  Sorel  says, 
their  descendants  now  preserve  “their  attachment  to 
their  native  soil,  the  love  of  their  ancestors,  the  respect 
for  the  ruins  of  the  past,  and  the  indestructible  venera- 
tion for  its  tombs.”2 

If  the  character  of  Normandy  is  thus  in  considerable 
measure  determined  by  geography,  its  boundaries  and 
even  its  internal  unity  are  chiefly  the  result  of  history. 
For  good  and  ill,  Normandy  has,  on  the  land  side,  no 
natural  frontiers.  The  hills  of  the  west  continue  those 
of  Brittany,  the  plains  of  the  east  merge  in  those  of 
Picardy.  The  watershed  of  the  south  marks  no  clear-cut 
boundary  from  Maine  and  Perche;  the  valleys  of  the 
Seine  and  the  Eure  lead  straight  to  the  Ile-de-France, 
separated  from  Normandy  only  by  those  border  for- 
tresses of  the  Avre  and  the  Vexin  which  are  the  perpetual 
1 La  France,  p.  161.  ■_ 2 Pages  normandes,  dedication. 


8 NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


battle-ground  of  Norman  history  — Normandy’s  Al- 
sace-Lorraine! Within  these  limits  lie  two  distinct 
physiographic  areas,  one  the  lower  portion  of  the  Paris 
basin,  the  other  a western  region  which  belongs  with 
Brittany  and  the  west  of  France.  These  districts  are 
commonly  distinguished  as  Upper  and  Lower  Normandy, 
terms  consecrated  by  long  use  and  representing  two 
contrasted  regions  and  types,  but  there  is  no  general 
agreement  as  to  their  exact  limits  or  the  limits  of  the 
region  of  Middle  Normandy  which  some  have  placed 
between  them.  Even  the  attempt  to  define  these  areas 
in  terms  of  cheese  — as  the  land  respectively  of  the 
creamy  Neufch&tel,  the  resilient  Pont-l’Eveque,  and 
the  flowing  Camembert  — is  defective  from  the  point 
of  view  of  geographical  accuracy! 

The  most  distinctive  parts  of  Upper  Normandy  are 
the  valley  of  the  Seine  and  the  region  to  the  north  and 
east,  the  pays  de  Caux,  fringed  by  the  coast  from  Havre 
to  the  frontier  of  Picardy.  Less  monotonous  than  the 
bare  plains  farther  east,  the  plateau  of  Caux  is  covered 
by  a rich  vegetation,  broken  by  scattered  farmsteads, 
where  house  and  orchard  and  outbuildings  are  pro- 
tected from  the  wind  by  those  rectangular  earthworks 
surmounted  by  trees  which  are  the  most  characteristic 
feature  of  the  region.  It  is  the  country  of  Madame  Bo- 
vary and  of  Maupassant’s  peasants.  Equally  typical 
is  the  valley  of  the  Seine,  ample,  majestic,  slow,  cutting 
its  sinuous  way  through  high  banks  which  grow  higher 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY  9 

as  we  approach  the  sea,  winding  around  ancient  strong, 
holds  like  Chateau  Oaillard  and  Tancarville  or  ruined 
abbeys  like  Jumieges  and  Saint- Wandrille,  — where 
Maeterlinck  s bees  still  hum  in  the  garden,  — catching 
the  tide  soon  after  it  enters  Normandy,  reaching  deep 
water  at  Rouen,  and  meeting  the  “longed-for  dash  of 
waves  in  the  great  estuary  at  its  mouth.  Halfway  from 
the  Norman  frontier  to  the  river’s  end  stands  Rouen, 
mistress  of  the  Seine  and  capital,  not  only  of  Upper  Nor- 
mandy, but  of  the  whole  Norman  land.  Celtic  in  name 
and  origin,  like  most  French  cities,  chief  town  of  the 
Roman  province  of  Lugdunensis  Secunda  and  of  the 
ecclesiastical  province  to  which  this  gave  rise,  the  politi- 
cal and  commercial  importance  of  Rouen  have  made  it 
also  the  principal  city  of  mediaeval  and  modern  Nor- 
mandy and  the  seat  of  the  changing  political  authority 
to  which  the  land  has  bowed.  As  early  as  the  twelfth 
century  it  is  one  of  the  famous  cities  of  Europe,  likened 
to  Rome  by  local  poets  and  celebrated  even  by  sober 
historians  for  its  murmuring  streams  and  pleasant 
meadows,  its  hill-girt  site  and  strong  defences,  its  beau- 
tiful churches  and  private  dwellings,  its  well-stocked 
markets,  and  its  extensive  foreign  trade.  In  spite  of  all 
modern  changes,  Rouen  is  still  a city  full  of  history,  in 
the  parchments  of  its  archives  and  the  stones  of  its  walls, 
in  its  stately  cathedral  with  the  ancient  tombs  of  the 
Norman  dukes,  in  the  glorious  nave  of  its  great  abbey- 
church,  the  florid  Gothic  of  Saint-Maclou,  the  richly 


10  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


carved  perpendicular  of  its  Palace  of  Justice,  and  its 
splendid  facades  of  the  French  Renaissance;  historic 
also  in  those  unbuilt  spots  which  mark  the  landing  of 
the  Northmen  and  the  burning  of  Joan  of  Arc. 

Lower  Normandy  shows  greater  variety,  comprising 
the  hilly  country  of  the  Bocage,  — the  so-called  Nor- 
man Switzerland,  — the  plain  of  Caen  and  the  pasture- 
lands  of  the  Bessin,  and  the  wide  sweep  of  the  Atlantic 
coast-line,  from  the  promontory  of  La  Hague  to  the 
shifting  sands  of  the  bay  of  Mon t-Saint- Michel.  It  is 
a country  of  green  fields  and  orchards  and  sunken  lanes, 
of  dank  parks  and  mouldering  chateaux,  of  deserted 
mills  and  ancient  parish  churches,  of  quaint  timbered 
houses  and  long  village  streets,  of  silent  streams,  small 
ports,  and  pebbly  beaches,  the  whole  merging  ultimately 
in  the  neighboring  lands  of  Brittany  and  Maine.  Its 
typical  places  are  Falaise,  Vire,  and  Argentan,  with  their 
ancient  castles  of  the  Norman  dukes;  Bayeux  and  Cou- 
tances,  the  foundations  of  whose  soaring  cathedrals 
carry  us  back  to  the  princely  prelates  of  the  Conquest ; 
provincial  capitals  of  the  Old  Regime,  like  Valognes,  or 
the  new,  like  Saint-L6;  and  best  of  all,  the  crowning 
glories  of  the  marvel  of  Mont-Saint-Michel.  Its  chief 
town  is  Caen,  stern  and  grey,  the  heart  of  Normandy 
as  Rouen  is  its  head,  an  old  poet  tells  us;  no  ancient 
Roman  capital,  but  the  creation  of  the  mediaeval  dukes, 
who  reared  its  great  abbey-churches  to  commemorate 
the  marriage  and  the  piety  of  William  the  Conqueror 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY 


ii 


and  Matilda,  and  who  established  their  exchequer  in 
its  castle ; an  intellectual  centre  also,  the  seat  of  the  only 
Norman  university,  of  an  academy,  and  of  a society  of 
antiquaries  which  has  recovered  for  us  great  portions 
of  the  Norman  past. 

Fashioned  and  enriched  by  the  hand  of  man,  the  land 
of  Normandy  has  in  turn  profoundly  influenced  the 
character  of  its  inhabitants.  First  and  foremost,  the 
Norman  is  a peasant,  industrious,  tenacious,  cautious, 
secretive,  distrustful  of  strangers,  close-fisted,  shrewd, 
even  to  the  point  of  cunning,  a hard  man  at  a bargain, 
eager  for  gain,  but  with  the  genius  for  small  affairs 
rather  than  for  great,  for  labor  and  economy  rather 
than  enterprise  and  daring.  Suspicious  of  novelty,  he  is 
a conservative  in  politics  with  a high  regard  for  vested 
interests.  The  possession  of  property,  especially  landed 
property,  is  his  great  ambition;  and  since,  as  St.  Francis 
long  ago  reminded  us,  property  is  the  sower  of  strife  and 
suits  at  law,  he  is  by  nature  litigious  and  lawyerly.  There 
is  a well-known  passage  of  Michelet  which  describes  the 
Norman  peasant  on  his  return  from  the  fields  explain- 
ing the  Civil  Code  to  his  attentive  children;  Racine,  who 
immortalized  Chicaneau  in  his  Plaideurs,  laid  the  scene 
in  a town  of  Lower  Normandy.  Even  in  his  time  this 
was  no  new  trait,  for  the  fondness  for  legal  form  and 
chicane  can  be  traced  in  the  early  days  of  the  Coutume 
de  Normandie,  while  the  Burnt  Njal  Saga  shows  us  the 
love  of  lawsuits  and  fine  points  of  procedure  full-blown 


12  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


among  the  Northmen  of  primitive  Iceland.  If  Nor- 
mandy is  the  pays  de  gain , it  is  also  the  pays  de  sapience. 
Hard-headed  and  practical,  the  Norman  is  not  an  ideal- 
ist or  a mystic ; even  his  religion  has  a practical  flavor, 
and  the  Bretons  are  wont  to  assert  that  there  has  never 
been  a Norman  saint.  With  the  verse  of  Corneille  and 
the  splendid  monuments  of  Romanesque  and  Gothic 
architecture  before  us,  no  one  can  accuse  the  Normans 
of  lack  of  artistic  sense,  yet  here,  too,  the  Norman 
imagination  is  inclined  to  be  restrained  and  severe,  real- 
istic rather  than  romantic.  Its  typical  modern  writers 
are  Flaubert  and  Maupassant;  its  typical  painter  is 
Millet,  choosing  his  scenes  from  Barbizon,  but  loyal 
to  the  peasant  types  of  his  native  Normandy.  Indeed 
Henry  Adams  insists  that  Flaubert’s  style,  exact,  im- 
personal, austere,  is  singularly  like  that  of  those  great 
works  of  Norman  Romanesque,  the  old  tower  of  Rouen 
cathedral  and  St.  Stephen’s  abbey  at  Caen,  and  shows 
us  “how  an  old  art  transmutes  itself  into  a new  one, 
without  changing  its  methods.”  1 In  history,  a field 
in  which  the  Norman  attachment  to  the  past  has  pro- 
duced notable  results,  the  distinguishing  qualities  of 
Norman  work  have  been  acute  criticism  and  great 
erudition  rather  than  brilliant  imagination.  In  science, 
when  a great  Norman  like  Laplace  discovered  the  neb- 
ular hypothesis,  he  relegated  it  to  a note  in  the  ap- 
pendix to  his  ordered  and  systematic  treatise  on  the 

1 Mont- Saint- Michel  and  Chartres , p.  55. 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY  13 

motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  The  Norman  mind  is 
neither  nebular  nor  hypothetical ! 

The  land  is  not  the  whole  of  nature’s  gift  to  Normandy; 
we  must  also  take  account  of  the  sea,  of  those  who  came 
by  sea  and  those  who  went  down  to  the  sea  in  ships; 
and  history  tells  us  of  another  type  of  Norman,  those 
giants  of  an  elder  day  who,  as  one  of  their  descendants 
has  said,  “found  the  seas  too  narrow  and  the  land  too 
tame.”  The  men  who  subdued  England  and  Sicily, 
who  discovered  the  Canaries  and  penetrated  to  the 
Mississippi,  who  colonized  Quebec  and  ruled  the  Isle 
of  France,  were  no  stay-at-homes,  no  cautious  lands- 
men interested  in  boundaries  and  inheritances  and 
vain  strivings  about  the  law.  Warriors  and  adven- 
turers in  untamed  lands  and  upon  uncharted  seas,  they 
were  organizers  of  states  and  rulers  of  peoples,  and  it 
is  their  work  which  gives  Normandy  its  chief  claim 
upon  the  attention  of  the  student  of  general  history. 
These  are  the  Normans  of  history  and  the  Normans  of 
romance.  Listen  to  the  earliest  characterizations  of  them 
which  have  reached  us  from  the  south,  as  a monk  of 
the  eleventh  century,  Aim6  of  Monte  Cassino,  sets 
out  to  recount  the  deeds  of  the  southern  Normans, 
fortissime  gent  who  have  spread  themselves  over  the 
earth,  ever  leaving  small  things  to  acquire  greater, 
unwilling  to  serve,  but  seeking  to  have  every  one  in 
subjection ; 1 or  as  his  contemporary,  Geoffrey  Malaterra, 
1 Ystoire  de  It  Normant  (ed.  Delarc),  p.  io. 


14  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

himself  very  likely  of  Norman  origin,  describes  this 
cunning  and  revengeful  race,  despising  their  own  in- 
heritance in  the  hope  of  winning  a greater  elsewhere, 
eager  for  gain  and  eager  for  power,  quick  to  imitate 
whatever  they  see,  at  once  lavish  and  greedy;  given  to 
hunting  and  hawking  and  delighting  in  horses  and  ac- 
coutrements and  fine  clothing,  yet  ready  when  occa- 
sion demands  to  bear  labor  and  hunger  and  cold ; skil- 
ful in  flattery  and  the  use  of  fine  words,  but  unbridled 
unless  held  down  firmly  by  the  yoke  of  justice.1  Turn 
then  to  the  northern  writers  of  the  following  century; 
William  of  Malmesbury,  who  describes  the  fierce  on- 
slaughts of  the  Normans,  inured  to  war  and  scarcely 
able  to  live  without  it,  their  stratagems  and  breaches  of 
faith' and  their  envy  of  both  equals  and  superiors;2  or 
the  English  monk  Ordericus,  who  spent  his  life  among 
them  in  Normandy  and  who  says:  — 

The  race  of  the  Normans  is  unconquered  and  ready  for 
any  wild  deed  unless  restrained  by  a strong  ruler.  In  what- 
ever gathering  they  find  themselves  they  always  seek  to  dom- 
inate, and  in  the  heat  of  their  ambition  they  are  often  led  to 
violate  their  obligations.  All  this  the  French  and  Bretons 
and  Flemings  and  other  neighbors  have  frequently  felt;  this 
the  Italians  and  the  Lombards,  the  Angles  and  Saxons,  have 
also  learned  to  their  undoing.3 

A little  later  it  is  the  Norman  poet  Wace  who  tells, 
through  the  mouth  of  the  dying  William  the  Con- 

1 Historia  Sicula , i,  3.  2 Gesta  Regum  (Rolls  Series),  p.  306. 

8 Ed.  LePrevost,  m,  p.  474;  cf.  p.  230. 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY 


15 

queror,  of  these  same  Normans  — brave  and  valiant 
and  conquering,  proud  and  boastful  and  fond  of  good 
cheer,  hard  to  control  and  needing  to  be  kept  under 
foot  by  their  rulers.1  Through  all  these  accounts  runs 
the  same  story  of  a high-spirited,  masterful,  unscrupu- 
lous race,  eager  for  danger  and  ready  for  every  adven- 
ture, and  needing  always  the  bit  and  bridle  rather  than 
the  spur. 

The  contrast  is  not  merely  between  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury and  the  twentieth,  between  a lawless  race  of  pio- 
neers and  a race  subdued  and  softened  by  generations  of 
order  and  peace ; the  two  types  are  present  in  the  early 
days  of  Norman  history.  Among  the  conquerors  of 
England  a recent  historian  distinguishes  “the  great 
soldiers  of  the  invading  host  . . . equally  remarkable 
for  foresight  in  council  and  for  headlong  courage  in  the 
hour  of  action,  whose  wits  are  sharpened  by  danger  and 
whose  resolution  is  only  stimulated  by  obstacles;  in- 
capable of  peaceful  industry  but  willing  to  prepare 
themselves  for  war  and  rapine  by  the  most  laborious 
apprenticeship”;  and  over  against  them  “the  politi- 
cians . . . cautious,  plausible,  deliberate,  with  an  im- 
mense capacity  for  detail,  and  an  innate  liking  for  rou- 
tine ; conscious  in  a manner  of  their  moral  obligations, 
but  mainly  concerned  with  small  economies  and  gains ; 
limited  in  their  horizon,  but  quick  to  recognise  superior 
powers  and  to  use  them  for  their  own  objects;  indifferent 
1 Roman  de  Rou  (ed.  Andresen),  n,  lines  9139-56. 


16  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


for  their  own  part  to  high  ideals,  and  yet  respectful  to 
idealists;  altogether  a hard-headed,  heavy-handed,  la- 
borious and  tenacious  type  of  men.”  1 

These  contrasting  types  of  life  and  character  it  is 
tempting  to  refer  to  the  respective  influences  of  land 
and  water,  to  the  differences  between  the  peasant  and 
the  rider  to  the  sea.  One  might  even  attempt  a philoso- 
phy of  Norman  history  somewhat  on  this  wise.  In  its 
normal  and  undisturbed  state  Normandy  is  a part  of 
France,  in  its  life  as  in  its  geography,  and  as  such  it 
shows  only  the  ordinary  local  differences  from  the  rest 
of  the  French  lands.  So  it  was  under  the  Romans,  so 
under  the  Franks.  At  the  beginning  of  the  tenth  cen- 
tury the  coming  of  the  Northmen  introduces  a new 
element  which  develops  relations  with  the  sea  and  the 
countries  beyond  the  sea,  with  Scandinavia  and  later 
with  the  British  Isles.  Normandy  ceases  to  be  provin- 
cial, it  almost  ceases  to  be  French;  it  even  becomes  the 
centre  of  an  Atlantic  empire  which  stretches  from  Scot- 
land to  the  Pyrenees.  It  sends  its  pilgrims  to  Com- 
postela, its  chivalry  to  Jerusalem,  its  younger  sons  to 
Sicily  and  southern  Italy.  Its  relations  with  the  sea 
do  not  cease  with  its  political  separation  from  the  lands 
across  the  Channel  in  1204.  The  English  come  back  for 
a time  in  the  fifteenth  century;  the  Normans  cross  the 
Atlantic  in  the  sixteenth  and  settle  Canada  in  the  sev- 
enteenth. But  the  overmastering  influence  of  the  soil 
1 H.  W.  C.  Davis,  England  under  the  Normans  and  Angevins,  p.  3. 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY 


17 

prevails  and  draws  its  children  back  to  itself.  The  sea- 
faring impulse  declines;  activity  turns  inward;  the 
province  is  finally  absorbed  in  the  nation;  Normandy 
is  again  a part  of  France,  and  the  originality  and  dis- 
tinctness of  its  history  fade  away  in  the  life  of  the 
whole. 

Philosophy  or  no  philosophy,  the  history  of  Nor- 
mandy falls  for  our  purposes  into  three  convenient 
periods.  The  first  of  these  extends  from  the  earliest 
times  to  the  coming  of  the  Northmen  in  91 1,  the  event 
which  created  Normandy  as  a distinct  entity.  The 
second  is  the  history  of  the  independent  Norman  duchy 
from  91 1 to  the  French  conquest  in  1204,  the  three 
splendid  centuries  of  Norman  independence  and  Nor- 
man greatness.  The  third  period  of  seven  hundred 
years  deals  with  Normandy  as  a part  of  France. 

The  interest  and  importance  of  these  several  periods 
vary  with  the  point  of  view.  Many  people  are  of  the 
opinion  that  the  only  history  which  matters  is  modern 
history,  and  the  more  modern  the  better  because  the 
nearer  to  ourselves  and  our  time.  To  such  everything 
is  meaningless  before  the  French  Revolution  or  the 
Franco- Prussian  War — or  perhaps  the  War  of  1914.  To 
those  who  care  only  for  their  own  time  the  past  has 
no  perspective;  as  a distinguished  maker  and  writer  of 
history  has  said,  James  Buchanan  and  Tiglath-Pileser 
become  contemporaries.  This  foreshortened  interest 


18  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


in  the  immediate  past  starts  from  a sound  principle, 
namely,  that  it  is  an  important  function  of  history  to 
explain  the  present  in  the  light  of  the  past  from  which 
it  has  come.  By  a natural  reaction  from  the  study 
which  stopped  with  Marcus  Aurelius  or  the  American 
colonies  or  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  the  demand  natu- 
rally arose  for  the  history  of  the  day  before  yesterday, 
which  was  once  declared  to  be  the  least  known  period 
in  human  annals.  This  is  quite  legitimate  if  it  does  not 
stop  here  and  does  not  accept  the  easy  assumption  that 
what  is  nearest  us  is  necessarily  most  important,  even 
to  ourselves.  Modern  Germany  owes  more  to  Martin 
Luther  than  to  Nietzsche,  more  to  Charles  the  Great, 
who  eleven  hundred  years  ago  conquered  and  civilized 
the  Saxons  and  began  the  subjugation  of  the  Slavs, 
than  to  many  a more  modern  figure  in  the  Sieges-allee 
at  Berlin.  Our  method  of  reckoning  time  and  latitude 
by  sixtieths  owes  less  to  the  contemporaries  of  James 
Buchanan  than  to  those  of  Tiglath-Pileser.  If  we  must 
apply  material  standards  to  history,  we  must  consider 
the  mass  as  well  as  the  square  of  the  distance. 

Obviously,  too,  we  must  consider  distance  in  space 
as  well  as  in  time.  The  Boston  fire  of  1872  did  not  rouse 
Paris,  and  our  hearts  do  not  thrill  at  the  mention  of 
the  Socialist  mayors  and  Conservative  deputies  whose 
names  become  household  words  when  the  streets  of 
French  towns  are  rechristened  in  their  memory.  The 
perspective  of  Norman  history  is  different  for  a Norman 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY 


19 

than  for  other  Frenchmen,  different  for  a Frenchman 
than  for  an  American. 

Now  there  can  be  no  question  that  for  the  average 
Norman  the  recent  period  bulks  larger  than  the  earlier. 
His  life  is  directly  and  constantly  affected  by  the  bu- 
reaucratic traditions  of  the  Old  Regime,  by  the  new 
freedom  and  the  land-distribution  of  the  Revolution, 
by  the  coming  of  the  railroad,  the  steamship,  and  the 
primary  school.  William  the  Conqueror,  Philip  Augus- 
tus, Joan  of  Arc,  their  deeds  and  their  times,  have  be- 
come mere  traditions  to  him,  if  indeed  they  are  that. 
In  all  these  changes,  however,  there  is  nothing  distinc- 
tive, nothing  peculiar,  nothing  that  cannot  be  studied 
just  as  well  in  some  other  part  of  France.  Their  local 
and  specifically  Norman  aspects  are  of  absorbing  in- 
terest to  Normandy,  but  they  are  meaningless  to  the 
world  at  large.  With  the  union  with  France  in  1204 
Norman  history  becomes  local  history,  and  whatever 
possesses  more  than  local  interest  it  shares  with  the 
rest  of  France.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  world 
at  large,  the  history  of  Normandy  runs  parallel  with 
that  of  the  other  regions  of  France.  Normandy  will 
contribute  its  quota  of  great  names  to  the  world,  in 
art  and  music  and  literature,  in  learning  and  indus- 
try and  politics;  it  will  take  its  part  in  the  great 
movements  of  French  history,  the  Reformation,  the 
Revolution,  the  new  republic;  but  it  will  be  only  a 
part  of  a larger  whole  and  derive  its  interest  for  the 


20  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


general  student  from  its  membership  in  the  body  of 
France. 

Much  the  same  is  true  of  the  period  before  the  com- 
ing of  the  Northmen.  Under  the  Celts,  the  Romans, 
and  the  Franks,  the  region  which  was  to  become  Nor- 
mandy is  not  distinguished  in  any  notable  way  from 
the  rest  of  Gaul,  and  it  has  the  further  disadvantage  of 
being  one  of  the  regions  concerning  which  our  knowl- 
edge is  particularly  scanty.  A few  names  of  tribes  in 
Caesar’s  Gallic  War  and  in  the  Roman  geographers,  a 
few  scattered  inscriptions  from  the  days  of  the  empire, 
a few  lives  of  saints  and  now  and  then  a rare  document 
of  Frankish  times,  this  with  the  results  of  archaeological 
research  constitutes  the  basis  of  early  Norman  history. 
After  all,  Normandy  was  remote  from  Rome  and  lay 
apart  also  from  the  main  currents  of  Frankish  life  and 
politics,  so  that  we  should  not  look  here  for  much  light 
on  general  conditions.  Nevertheless  it  is  in  this  obscure 
age  that  the  foundations  of  Normandy  were  laid.  First 
of  all,  the  population,  Gallo-Roman  at  bottom,  receiv- 
ing a Germanic  admixture  of  Saxons  and  Franks  long 
before  the  coming  of  the  Northmen,  but  still  prepon- 
derantly non-Germanic  in  its  racial  type.  Next,  lan- 
guage, determined  by  the  process  of  Romanization  and 
persisting  as  a Romance  speech  in  spite  of  Saxon  and 
Frank  and  Northman,  until  in  the  earliest  monuments 
of  the  eleventh  century  we  can  recognize  the  beginnings 
of  modern  French.  Then  law,  the  Frankish  law  which 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY 


21 


the  Northmen  were  to  absorb,  perpetuate,  and  carry 
to  England.  Fourth,  religion,  the  Christian  faith,  tri- 
umphing only  with  difficulty  in  a land  largely  rural  and 
open  to  barbarian  invasion,  but  established  firmly  by 
the  sixth  century  and  already  reenforced  by  monastic 
foundations  which  were  to  be  the  centres  of  faith  and 
culture  to  a later  age.  Finally,  the  framework  of  politi- 
cal geography,  resting  on  the  Roman  cities  which  with 
some  modifications  were  perpetuated  as  the  dioceses  of 
the  mediaeval  church,  and  connected  by  Roman  roads 
which  remained  until  modern  times  the  great  highways 
of  local  communication.  A beginning  was  also  made  in 
the  direction  of  separate  organization  when,  toward  the 
close  of  the  fourth  century,  these  districts  of  the  north- 
west are  for  the  first  time  set  off  by  themselves  as  an 
administrative  area,  the  province  of  Lugdunensis  Se- 
cunda,  which  coincides  with  later  Normandy.  Then,  as 
regularly  throughout  Gaul,  the  civil  province  becomes 
the  ecclesiastical  province,  centring  about  its  oldest 
church,  Rouen,  and  the  province  of  the  archbishop  of 
Rouen  perpetuates  the  boundaries  of  the  political  area 
after  the  political  authority  passed  away,  and  carries 
over  to  the  Middle  Ages  the  outline  of  the  Roman  or- 
ganization. In  all  this  process  there  is  nothing  particu- 
larly different  from  what  took  place  throughout  the 
greater  part  of  northern  Gaul,  but  the  results  were 
fundamental  for  Normandy  and  for  the  whole  of  Nor- 
man history. 


22  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


A new  epoch  begins  with  the  coming  of  the  Northmen 
in  the  early  tenth  century,  as  a result  of  which  Nor- 
mandy was  differentiated  from  the  rest  of  France  and 
carried  into  the  broader  currents  of  European  history. 
At  first  an  outpost  of  the  Scandinavian  north,  its  rela- 
tions soon  shifted  as  it  bred  the  conquerors  of  Eng- 
land and  Sicily.  The  Normans  of  the  eleventh  century, 
Henry  Adams  maintains,  stood  more  fully  in  the  centre 
of  the  world’s  history  than  their  English  descendants 
ever  did.  They  “were  a part,  and  a great  part,  of  the 
Church,  of  France,  and  of  Europe.”  The  Popes  leaned 
on  them,  at  times  heavily.  By  the  conquest  of  England 
the  “Norman  dukes  cast  the  kings  of  France  into  the 
shade.  . . . Normans  were  everywhere  in  1066,  and 
everywhere  in  the  lead  of  their  age.”  1 A century  later 
Normans  ruled  half  of  Italy,  two  thirds  of  France,  and 
the  whole  of  England ; and  they  had  made  a beginning 
on  Ireland  and  Scotland.  No  one  can  write  of  Euro- 
pean affairs  throughout  this  whole  period  without 
giving  a large  place  to  the  Normans  and  their  doings; 
while  events  like  the  conquests  of  England  and  Ire- 
land changed  the  course  of  history. 

Normandy  has  also  its  place  in  the  history  of  Euro- 
pean institutions,  for  the  Normans  were  organizers  as 
well  as  conquerors,  and  their  political  creations  were 
the  most  efficient  states  of  their  time.  Masterful,  yet 
legally  minded  and  businesslike,  with  a sense  for  detail 
1 Mont- Saint- Michel  and  Chartres,  p.  4. , 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY 


23 

and  routine,  the  Norman  princes  had  a sure  instinct 
for  state-building,  at  home  and  abroad.  The  Norman 
duchy  was  a compact  and  powerful  state  before  its  duke 
crossed  the  Channel,  and  the  central  government  which 
the  Normans  created  in  England  showed  the  same 
characteristics  on  a larger  scale.  The  Anglo-Norman 
empire  of  the  twelfth  century  was  the  marvel  of  its 
day,  while  the  history  of  the  Norman  kingdom  of  Sic- 
ily showed  that  the  Norman  genius  for  assimilation  and 
political  organization  was  not  confined  to  the  dukes  of 
Rouen.  Highly  significant  during  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries,  Norman  institutions  remained  of 
permanent  importance,  affecting  the  central  adminis- 
tration of  France  in  ways  which  are  still  obscure,  and 
exerting  a decisive  influence  upon  the  law  and  govern- 
ment of  England.  Normandy  was  the  connecting  link 
between  the  Frankish  law  of  the  Continent  and  the 
English  common  law,  and  thus  claims  a share  in  the 
jurisprudence  of  the  wide-flung  lands  to  which  the  com- 
mon law  has  spread.  The  institution  of  trial  by  jury,  for 
example,  is  of  Norman  origin,  or  rather  of  Frankish 
origin  and  Norman  development. 

By  virtue,  then,  of  its  large  part  in  the  events  of  it'' 
time,  by  virtue  of  the  decisive  character  of  the  events 
in  which  the  Normans  took  part,  and  by  virtue  of  the 
permanent  influence  of  its  institutions,  the  Normandy 
of  the  dukes  can  claim  an  important  position  in  the 
general  history  of  the  world.  In  seeking  to  describe  the 


24  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

place  of  the  Normans  in  European  history  we  shall  ac- 
cordingly pass  over  those  periods,  the  earlier  and  the 
later,  which  are  primarily  of  local  interest,  and  concen- 
trate ourselves  upon  the  heroic  age  of  the  tenth,  elev- 
enth, and  twelfth  centuries.  We  shall  begin  with  the 
coming  of  the  Northmen  and  the  creation  of  the  Nor- 
man state.  The  third  lecture  will  consider  the  Norman 
conquest  of  England;  the  fourth,  the  Norman  empire  to 
which  this  gave  rise.  We  shall  then  trace  the  events 
which  led  to  the  separation  of  Normandy  from  England 
and  its  ultimate  union  in  1204  with  the  French  mon- 
archy under  Philip  Augustus,  concluding  our  survey  of 
the  Normans  of  the  north  by  a sketch  of  Norman  life 
and  culture  in  this  period.  The  two  concluding  lectures 
will  trace  the  establishment  of  the  Norman  kingdom 
of  southern  Italy  and  Sicily,  and  examine  the  brilliant 
composite  civilization  of  the  southern  Normans  from  the 
reign  of  the  great  King  Roger  to  the  accession  of  his 
still  more  famous  grandson,  the  Emperor  Frederick  II. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

There  is  no  substantial  general  history  of  Normandy.  For  a review 
of  the  materials,  the  literature,  and  the  problems,  see  the  excellent 
r£sum6  of  H.  Prentout,  La  Normandie  (Paris,  1910,  reprinted  from 
the  Revue  de  synthese  historique).  For  bibliographical  purposes  this 
should  be  supplemented  by  the  Catalogue  des  ouvrages  normands  de 
la  Bibliotheque  municipale  de  Caen  (Caen,  1910-12).  For  the  general 
features  of  Norman  geography,  see  the  brief  account  by  Vidal  de  la 
Blache,  in  the  Histoire  de  France  of  Lavisse,  republished  with  illustra- 
tions under  the  title  of  La  France  (Paris,  1908).  The  subject  can  best 


NORMANDY  IN  HISTORY 


25 


be  followed  out  in  J.  Sion,  Les  pay  sans  de  la  Normandie  orientate 
(Paris,  1908),  and  R.  de  Felice,  La  Basse- Normandie  (Paris,  1907). 
Various  aspects  of  Norman  genius  and  character  are  delightfully 
treated  by  Albert  Sorel,  Pages  normandes  (Paris,  1907).  The  pro- 
ceedings of  the  historical  congress  held  in  conjunction  with  the  mille- 
naire  of  1911  were  to  have  been  printed  in  full,  but  so  far  only  various 
reprints  of  individual  communications  have  appeared.  J.  Touflet,  Le 
millenaire  de  Normandie  (Rouen,  1913),  is  not  an  account  of  the  com- 
memoration, but  an  illustrated  collection  of  popular  papers.  One  of 
the  more  notable  pamphlets  published  on  this  occasion  is  that  of  Ga- 
briel Monod,  Le  rdle  de  la  Normandie  dans  Vhistoire  de  France  (Paris, 
1911). 


II 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN 


^ H ^HE  central  fact  of  Norman  history  and  the 
starting-point  for  its  study  is  the  event  so  bril- 
-oL  liantly  commemorated  by  the  millenary  of 
1911,  the  grant  of  Normandy  to  Rollo  and  his  northern 
followers  in  the  year  91 1.  The  history  of  Normandy,  of 
course,  began  long  before  that  year.  The  land  was  there, 
and  likewise  in  large  measure  the  people,  that  is  to  say, 
probably  the  greater  part  of  the  elements  which  went 
to  make  the  population  of  the  country  at  a later  day; 
and  the  history  of  the  region  can  be  traced  back  several 
centuries.  But  after  all,  neither  the  Celtic  civitates  nor 
the  Roman  province  of  Lugdunensis  Secunda  nor  the 
ecclesiastical  province  of  Rouen  which  took  its  place 
nor  the  northwestern  pagi  of  the  Frankish  empire  were 
Normandy.  They  lacked  the  name  — that  is  obvious; 
they  lacked  also  individuality  of  character,  which  is 
more.  They  were  a part,  and  not  a distinctive  part,  of 
something  else,  whereas  later  Normandy  was  a separate 
entity  with  a life  and  a history  of  its  own.  And  the 
dividing  line  must  be  drawn  when  the  Northmen  first 
established  themselves  permanently  in  the  land  and  gave 
it  a new  name  and  a new  history. 

It  must  be  said  that  the  date  91 1,  like  most  exact 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  27 

dates  in  history,  is  somewhat  arbitrary.  The  Northmen 
first  invaded  Normandy  in  841,  and  their  inroads  did 
not  cease  until  about  966,  so  that  the  year  91 1 falls 
near  the  middle  of  a century  and  a quarter  of  invasion 
and  settlement,  and  marks  neither  the  beginning  nor 
the  end  of  an  epoch.  It  is  also  true  that  this  date,  like 
many  another  which  appears  in  heavy-faced  type  in  our 
histories,  is  not  known  with  entire  certainty,  for  some 
historians  have  placed  in  912  or  even  later  the  events 
commonly  assigned  to  that  year.  On  the  whole,  however, 
there  is  good  reason  for  maintaining  91 1 — and  a thou- 
sandth anniversary  must  have  some  definite  date  to 
commemorate ! 

For  the  actual  occurrences  of  that  year,  we  have  only 
the  account  of  a romancing  historian  of  a hundred  years 
later,  reenforced  here  and  there  by  the  exceedingly 
scanty  records  of  the  time.  The  main  fact  is  clear, 
namely  that  the  Frankish  king,  Charles  the  Simple, 
granted  Rollo  as  a fief  a considerable  part,  the  eastern 
part,  of  later  Normandy.  Apparently  Rollo  did  homage 
for  his  fief  in  feudal  fashion  by  placing  his  hands  between 
the  hands  of  the  king,  something,  we  are  told,  which 
"neither  his  father,  nor  his  grandfather,  nor  his  great- 
grandfather before  him  had  ever  done  for  any  man.” 
Legend  goes  on  to  relate,  however,  that  Rollo  refused 
to  kneel  and  kiss  the  king’s  foot,  crying  out  in  his  own 
speech,  "No,  by  God!”  and  that  the  companion  to 
whom  he  delegated  the  unwelcome  obligation  performed 


28  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


it  so  clumsily  that  he  overturned  the  king,  to  the  great 
merriment  of  the  assembled  Northmen.  Rollo  did  not 
receive  the  whole  of  the  later  duchy,  but  only  the  region 
on  either  side  of  the  Seine  which  came  to  be  known  as 
Upper  Normandy,  and  it  was  not  till  924  that  the  North- 
men acquired  also  middle  Normandy,  or  the  Bessin,  while 
the  west,  the  Cotentin  and  the  Avranchin,  fell  to  them 
only  in  933. 

As  to  Rollo’s  personality,  we  have  only  the  evidence 
of  later  Norman  historians  of  doubtful  authority  and 
the  Norse  saga  of  Harold  Fairhair.  If,  as  seems  likely, 
their  accounts  relate  to  the  same  person,  he  was  known 
in  the  north  as  Hrolf  the  Ganger,  because  he  was  so 
huge  that  no  horse  could  carry  him  and  he  must  needs 
gang  afoot.  A pirate  at  home,  he  was  driven  into  exile 
by  the  anger  of  King  Harold,  whereupon  he  followed 
his  trade  in  the  Western  Isles  and  in  Gaul,  and  rose  to 
be  a great  Jarl  among  his  people.  The  saga  makes  him 
a Norwegian,  but  Danish  scholars  have  sought  to  prove 
him  a Dane,  and  more  recently  the  cudgels  have  been 
taken  up  for  his  Swedish  origin.  To  me  the  Norwegian 
theory  seems  on  the  whole  the  most  probable,  being 
based  on  a trustworthy  saga  and  corroborated  by  other 
incidental  evidence.  Yet,  however  significant  of  Rollo’s 
importance  it  may  be  that  three  great  countries  should 
each  claim  him  as  its  own,  like  the  seven  cities  that 
strove  for  the  honor  of  Homer’s  birthplace,  the  ques- 
tion of  his  nationality  is  historically  of  subordinate 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  29 

interest,  and  at  a time  when  national  lines  were  not 
yet  drawn,  it  is  futile  to  fit  the  inadequate  evidence 
into  one  or  another  theory.  The  important  fact  is  that 
Norway,  Denmark,  and  even  more  distant  Sweden,  all 
contributed  to  the  colonists  who  settled  in  Normandy 
under  Rollo  and  his  successors,  and  the  achievements 
of  the  Normans  thus  become  the  common  heritage  of 
the  Scandinavian  race. 

The  colonization  of  Normandy  was,  of  course,  only 
a small  part  of  the  work  of  this  heroic  age  of  Scandina- 
vian expansion.  The  great  emigration  from  the  North 
in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  has  been  explained  in 
part  by  the  growth  of  centralized  government  and  the 
consequent  departure  of  the  independent,  the  turbu- 
lent, and  the  untamed  for  new  fields  of  adventure;  but 
its  chief  cause  was  doubtless  that  which  lies  back  of 
colonizing  movements  in  all  ages,  the  growth  of  popu- 
lation and  the  need  of  more  room.  Five  centuries  ear- 
lier this  land-hunger  had  pushed  the  Germanic  tribes 
across  the  Rhine  and  Danube  and  produced  the  great 
wandering  of  the  peoples  which  destroyed  the  Roman 
empire ; and  the  Viking  raids  were  simply  a later  aspect 
of  this  same  Volkerwanderung,  retarded  by  the  out- 
lying position  of  the  Scandinavian  lands  and  by  the 
greater  difficulty  of  migration  by  sea.  For,  unlike  the 
Goths  who  swept  across  the  map  of  Europe  in  vast 
curves  of  marching  men,  or  the  Franks  who  moved 
forward  by  slow  stages  of  gradual  settlement  in  their 


30  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

occupation  of  Roman  Gaul,  the  Scandinavian  invaders 
were  men  of  the  sea  and  migrated  in  ships.  The  deep 
fjords  of  Norway  and  the  indented  coast  of  the  North 
Sea  and  the  Baltic  made  them  perforce  sailors  and 
fishermen  and  taught  them  the  mastery  of  the  wider 
ocean.  In  their  dragon  ships  — shallow,  clinker-built, 
half-decked  craft,  pointed  at  either  end,  low  in  the 
middle,  where  the  gunwale  was  protected  by  a row  of 
shields  — they  could  cross  the  sea,  explore  creeks  and 
inlets,  and  follow  the  course  of  rivers  far  above  their 
mouth.  The  greater  ships  might  reach  the  length  of 
seventy-five  feet  and  carry  as  many  as  one  hundred  and 
twenty  men,  but  these  were  the  largest,  and  even  these 
offered  but  a slow  means  of  migration.  We  must  think 
of  the  whole  movement  at  first  as  one  of  small  and 
scattered  bands,  terrible  more  for  their  fierce,  sudden, 
and  skilful  methods  of  attack,  than  for  force  of  su- 
perior numbers  or  organization.  The  truth  is  that 
sea-power,  whose  strategic  significance  in  modern  war- 
fare Admiral  Mahan  did  so  much  to  make  us  appreciate, 
was  in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries,  so  far  as  western 
Europe  was  concerned,  a Scandinavian  monopoly.  Mas- 
ters of  the  seas,  the  Northmen  harried  the  coasts  and 
river-valleys  as  they  would,  and  there  was  none  to  drive 
them  back. 

Outside  of  the  Baltic,  where  the  Danes  ravaged  the 
southern  coast  and  the  Swedes  moved  eastward  to  lay 
the  foundations  of  the  Russian  state  and  to  penetrate 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  31 

as  far  as  Constantinople,  two  main  routes  lay  open  to 
the  masters  of  the  northern  seas.  One  led  west  to  the 
Orkneys,  the  Shetlands,  and  the  coast  of  Scotland,  and 
then  either  south  to  the  shores  of  Ireland,  or  further 
west  to  Iceland,  Greenland,  and  America.  The  other 
led  through  the  North  Sea  to  England,  the  Low  Coun- 
tries, and  the  coast  of  Gaul.  Both  were  used,  and  used 
freely,  by  the  Vikings,  and  in  both  directions  they  ac- 
complished enduring  results:  — Iceland  and  the  king- 
doms of  the  isles  in  the  north,  the  beginnings  of  town 
life  and  commerce  in  Ireland,  the  Danelaw  in  England, 
and  the  duchy  of  Normandy. 

When  the  great  northern  invasions  began  at  the  close 
of  the  eighth  century,  Charles  the  Great  ruled  all  the 
Christian  lands  of  the  western  Continent.  By  fire  and 
sword  he  converted  the  heathen  Saxons  of  the  north  to 
Christianity  and  civilization  and  advanced  his  frontier 
to  the  Danish  border,  so  that  the  pious  monk  of  St. 
Gall  laments  that  he  did  not  conquer  the  Danes  also 
— “be  it  that  Divine  Providence  was  not  then  on  our 
side,  or  that  our  sins  rose  up  against  us.”  And  this  same 
gossiping  chronicler  — not  the  best  of  authorities  it  is 
true  — has  left  us  a striking  picture  of  Charlemagne’s 
first  experience  with  the  Scandinavian  invaders:  — 

Once  Charles  arrived  by  chance  at  a certain  maritime 
town  of  Gallia  Narbonensis.  While  he  was  sitting  at  dinner, 
and  had  not  been  recognized  by  the  townspeople,  some 
northern  pirates  came  to  carry  on  their  depredations  in  that 


32  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

very  port.  When  the  ships  were  perceived  some  thought 
they  were  Jewish  merchants,  some  that  they  were  Africans, 
some  Bretons.  But  the  wise  king,  knowing  from  the  shape  and 
swiftness  of  the  vessels  what  sort  of  crews  they  carried,  said 
to  those  about  him,  “ These  ships  bear  no  merchandize,  but 
cruel  foes.”  At  these  words  all  the  Franks  rivalled  each 
other  in  the  speed  with  which  they  rushed  to  attack  the 
boats.  But  it  was  useless.  The  Northmen  hearing  that  there 
stood  the  man  whom  they  were  wont  to  call  Charles  the 
Hammer,  were  afraid  lest  all  their  fleet  should  be  taken  in  the 
port,  and  should  be  broken  in  pieces;  and  their  flight  was  so 
rapid,  that  they  withdrew  themselves  not  only  from  the 
swords,  but  even  from  the  eyes  of  those  who  wished  to  catch 
them.  The  religious  Charles,  however,  seized  by  a holy  fear, 
rose  from  the  table,  and  looked  out  of  the  window  towards  the 
East,  remaining  long  in  that  position,  his  face  bathed  in  tears. 
No  one  ventured  to  question  him:  but  turning  to  his  fol- 
lowers he  said,  “ Know  ye  why  I weep?  Truly  I fear  not  that 
these  will  injure  me.  But  I am  deeply  grieved  that  in  my  life- 
time they  should  have  been  so  near  landing  on  these  shores,  and 
I am  overwhelmed  with  sorrow  as  I look  forward  and  see  what 
evils  they  will  bring  upon  my  offspring  and  their  people.”  1 

From  the  actuality  of  such  an  invasion  the  great 
Charles  was  spared,  but  in  the  British  Isles  it  had  al- 
ready begun.  In  787  the  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle  tells 
us  there  “ first  came  three  ships  of  Northmen  out  of 
Haeretha-land,,  [Denmark?],  whereupon  the  reeve  of 
the  Dorset  port  “rode  down  to  the  place  and  would 
have  driven  them  to  the  king’s  town,  because  he  knew 
not  who  they  were;  and  they  there  slew  him.  These 
were  the  first  ships  of  Danishmen  which  sought  the 
1 II,  14,  as  translated  by  Keary,  Vikings , p.  136. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  33 

land  of  the  English  nation.”  Six  years  later  they  fell 
upon  the  holy  isle  of  Lindisfarne,  pillaged  the  church 
sacred  with  the  memories  of  Northumbrian  Christianity, 
and  slew  the  monks  or  drove  them  into  the  sea.  In  807 
they  first  landed  in  Ireland,  and  “after  this  there  came 
great  sea-cast  floods  of  foreigners  into  Erin,  so  that  there 
was  not  a point  thereof  without  a fleet.”  Then  came  the 
turn  of  the  Continent,  first  along  the  coast  of  Frisia  and 
Flanders,  and  then  in  what  is  now  France.  In  841, 
when  the  grandsons  of  Charlemagne  were  quarrelling 
over  the  fragments  of  his  empire  at  Fontenay,  the  first 
fleet  of  Northmen  entered  the  Seine;  in  843  when  they 
were  making  their  treaty  of  partition  at  Verdun,  the 
Vikings  entered  Nantes  on  St.  John’s  Day  and  slew 
the  bishop  before  the  high  altar  as  he  intoned  the  Sur- 
sum  corda  of  the  mass.  Within  two  years  they  sacked 
Hamburg  and  Paris.  Wherever  possible  they  established 
themselves  at  the  mouths  of  the  great  rivers,  often  on 
an  island  like  Walcheren,  Noirmoutier,  or  the  lie  de 
Rh6,  whence  the  rivers  opened  the  whole  country  to 
them  — Elbe  and  Weser,  Rhine  and  Meuse,  Scheldt, 
Seine,  Loire,  and  Garonne,  even  to  the  Guadalquivir,  by 
which  the  Arabic  chronicler  tells  us  the  “dark  red  sea- 
birds” penetrated  to  Seville.  One  band  more  venture- 
some than  the  rest,  entered  the  Mediterranean  and 
reached  Marseilles,  whence  under  their  leader  Hastings 
they  sacked  the  Italian  town  of  Luna,  apparently  in  the 
belief  that  it  was  Rome. 


34  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

About  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century  the  number  of 
the  Norse  pirates  greatly  increased  and  their  ravages 
became  more  regular  and  constant,  leading  in  many 
cases  to  permanent  settlements.  In  855  the  Old  English 
Chronicle  tells  us  “the  heathen  men,  for  the  first  time, 
remained  over  winter  in  Sheppey,”  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Thames,  and  thereafter,  year  by  year,  it  recounts  the 
deeds  of  the  Viking  band  which  wintered  in  England  and 
is  called  simply  here,  the  army.  It  is  no  longer  a matter  of 
summer  raids  but  of  unbroken  occupation.  In  878  dur- 
ing midwinter  “the  army  stole  away  to  Chippenham  and 
overran  the  land  of  the  West-Saxons  and  sat  down  there; 
and  many  of  the  people  they  drove  beyond  sea,  and  of 
the  remainder  the  greater  part  they  subdued  and  forced 
to  obey  them  except  King  Alfred,  and  he,  with  a small 
band,  with  difficulty  retreated  to  the  woods  and  to  the 
fastnesses  of  the  moors.”  The  following  year  a simi- 
lar band,  now  swollen  into  “the  great  army”  made  its 
appearance  on  the  Continent  and  for  fourteen  years 
ravaged  the  territory  between  the  Rhine  and  the  Loire. 
Year  after  year  “the  steel  of  the  heathen  glistened”; 
in  886  they  laid  siege  to  Paris,  which  was  relieved  not 
by  the  king’s  valor  but  by  his  offering  them  Burgundy 
to  plunder  instead.  A century  later  the  English  began 
to  buy  them  off  with  Danegeld.  “All  men,”  laments 
a chronicler,  “give  themselves  to  flight.  No  one  cries 
out,  Stand  and  fight  for  your  country,  your  church, 
your  countrymen.  What  they  ought  to  defend  with 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  35 

arms,  they  shamefully  redeem  by  payments.”  There 
was  nothing  to  do  but  add  a new  petition  to  the  litany, 
“From  the  fury  of  the  Northmen,  good  Lord,  deliver 


To  the  writers  of  the  time,  who  could  not  see  the 
permanent  results  of  Viking  settlement,  the  Northmen 
were  barbarian  pirates,  without  piety  or  pity,  “who  wept 
neither  for  their  sins  nor  for  their  dead,”  and  their  ex- 
peditions were  mere  wanton  pillage  and  destruction. 
Moreover,  these  writers  were  regularly  monks  or  priests, 
and  it  was  the  church  that  suffered  most  severely.  A 
walled  town  or  castle  might  often  successfully  resist, 
but  the  monasteries,  protected  from  Christian  freeboot- 
ers by  their  sacred  character,  were  simply  so  many  oppor- 
tunities for  plunder  to  the  heathen  of  the  north.  Some- 
times the  monks  perished  with  their  monastery,  often 
they  escaped  only  with  their  lives  and  a few  precious 
title-deeds,  to  find  on  their  return  merely  a heap  of 
blackened  ruins  and  a desolate  countryside.  Many  re- 
ligious establishments  utterly  disappeared  in  the  course 
of  the  invasions.  In  Normandy  scarcely  a church  sur- 
vives anterior  to  the  tenth  century.  As  the  monasteries 
were  at  this  time  the  chief  centres  of  learning  and  culture 
throughout  western  Europe,  their  losses  were  the  losses 
of  civilization,  and  in  this  respect  the  verdict  of  the  mo- 
nastic chroniclers  is  justified.  There  is,  however,  another 
side  to  the  story,  which  Scandinavian  scholars  have  not 


36  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

been  slow  to  emphasize.  Heathen  still  and  from  one 
point  of  view  barbarian,  the  Northmen  had  yet  a culture 
of  their  own,  well  advanced  on  its  material  side,  notable 
in  its  artistic  skill,  and  rich  in  its  treasures  of  poetry 
and  story.  Its  material  treasures  have  been  in  part 
recovered  by  the  labors  of  northern  archaeologists, 
while  its  literary  wealth  is  now  in  large  measure  acces- 
sible in  English  in  the  numerous  translations  of  sagas 
and  Eddie  poems. 

After  all  barbarism,  like  culture,  is  a relative  thing, 
and  judged  by  contemporary  standards,  the  Vikings 
were  not  barbarians.  They  rather  show  a strange  com- 
bination of  the  primitive  and  the  civilized  — elemental 
passions  expressing  themselves  with  a high  degree  of 
literary  art,  barbaric  adornment  wrought  with  skilled 
craftsmanship,  Berserker  rage  supplemented  by  clever 
strategy,  pitiless  savagery  combined  with  a strong  sense 
of  public  order,  constant  feuds  and  murders  coexistent 
with  a most  elaborate  system  of  law  and  legal  procedure. 
Young  from  our  point  of  view,  the  civilization  of  the 
Vikings  had  behind  it  a history  of  perhaps  fifteen  cen- 
turies. 

On  its  material  side  Viking  civilization  is  character- 
ized by  a considerable  degree  of  wealth  and  luxury. 
Much  of  this,  naturally,  was  gained  by  pillage,  but  much 
also  came  by  trade.  The  northern  warriors  do  not  seem 
to  have  had  that  contempt  for  traffic  which  has  char- 
acterized many  military  societies,  and  they  turned  read- 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  37 

ily  enough  from  war  to  commerce.  In  a Viking  tomb 
recently  discovered  in  the  Hebrides  there  were  found  be- 
side the  sword  and  spear  and  battle-axe  of  all  warriors, 
a pair  of  scales,  fit  emblem  of  the  double  life  the  chief 
had  led  on  earth  and  may  have  hoped  to  continue  here- 
after! Of  trade,  and  especially  trade  with  the  Orient, 
there  is  abundant  evidence  in  the  great  treasures  of  gold 
and  silver  coin  found  in  many  regions  of  the  north. 
The  finely  wrought  objects  of  gold  and  silver  and  en- 
crusted metal,  which  were  once  supposed  to  have  been 
imported  from  the  south  and  east,  are  now  known 
to  have  been  in  large  part  of  native  workmanship,  in- 
fluenced, of  course,  by  the  imitation  of  foreign  models, 
but  also  carrying  out  traditions  of  ornamentation,  such 
as  the  use  of  animal  forms,  which  can  be  traced  back 
continuously  to  the  earliest  ages  of  Scandinavian  history. 
Shields  and  damascened  swords,  arm-rings  and  neck- 
rings,  pins  and  brooches  — especially  brooches,  if  you 
find  an  unknown  object,  says  Montelius,  call  it  a brooch 
and  you  will  generally  be  right  — all  testify,  both  in 
their  abundance  and  their  beauty  of  workmanship,  to  an 
advanced  stage  of  art  and  handicraft. 

This  love  of  the  north  for  luxury  of  adornment  is 
amply  seen  in  chronicle  and  saga.  When  the  Irish  drove 
the  Vikings  out  of  Limerick  in  968  they  took  from  them 
“their  jewels  and  their  best  property,  and  their  saddles 
beautiful  and  foreign,  their  gold  and  their  silver,  their 
beautifully  woven  cloth  of  all  kinds  and  colors  — satin 


38  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

and  silk,  pleasing  and  variegated,  both  scarlet  and  green, 
and  all  sorts  of  cloth  in  like  manner/ ' “How,”  asks 
the  Valkyrie  in  the  Lay  of  the  Raven , “does  the  generous 
Prince  Harold  deal  with  the  men  of  feats  of  renown  that 
guard  his  land?”  The  Raven  answers:  — 

They  are  well  cared  for,  the  warriors  that  cast  dice  in 
Harold's  court.  They  are  endowed  with  wealth  and  with 
fair  swords,  with  the  ore  of  the  Huns,  and  with  maids  from 
the  East.  They  are  glad  when  they  have  hopes  of  a battle, 
they  will  leap  up  in  hot  haste  and  ply  the  oars,  snapping  the 
oar-thongs  and  cracking  the  tholes.  Fiercely,  I ween,  do  they 
churn  the  water  with  their  oars  at  the  king's  bidding. 

Quoth  the  Walkyrie : I will  ask  thee,  for  thou  knowest  the 
truth  of  all  these  things,  of  the  meed  of  the  Poets,  since  thou 
must  know  clearly  the  state  of  the  minstrels  that  live  with 
Harold. 

Quoth  the  Raven : It  is  easily  seen  by  their  cheer,  and  their 
gold  rings,  that  they  are  among  the  friends  of  the  king.  They 
have  red  cloaks  right  fairly  fringed,  silver-mounted  swords, 
and  ring-woven  sarks,  gilt  trappings,  and  graven  helmets, 
wrist-fitting  rings,  the  gifts  of  Harold.1 

As  regards  social  organization,  Viking  society  shows 
the  Germanic  division  into  three  classes,  thrall,  churl, 
and  noble.  Their  respective  characters  and  occupations 
are  thus  described  in  the  Rigsmal:  — 

Thrall  was  of  swarthy  skin,  his  hands  wrinkled,  his 
knuckles  bent,  his  fingers  thick,  his  face  ugly,  his  back  broad, 
his  heels  long.  He  began  to  put  forth  his  strength,  binding 
bast,  making  loads,  and  bearing  home  faggots  the  weary 
long  day.  His  children  busied  themselves  with  building 

1 Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale,  i,  p.  257. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  39 

fences,  dunging  plowland,  tending  swine,  herding  goats, 
and  digging  peat.  Their  names  were  Sooty  and  Cowherd, 
Clumsy  and  Lout  and  Laggard,  etc.  Carl,  or  churl,  was 
red  and  ruddy,  with  rolling  eyes,  and  took  to  breaking 
oxen,  building  plows,  timbering  houses,  and  making  carts. 
Earl,  the  noble,  had  yellow  hair,  his  cheeks  were  rosy,  his 
eyes  were  keen  as  a young  serpent’s.  His  occupation  was 
shaping  the  shield,  bending  the  bow,  hurling  the  javelin, 
shaking  the  lance,  riding  horses,  throwing  dice,  fencing, 
and  swimming.  He  began  to  waken  war,  to  redden  the  field, 
and  to  fell  the  doomed.1 

Both  churl  and  earl  were  largely  represented  in  those 
who  went  to  sea,  but  the  nobility  naturally  preponder- 
ated, and  it  is  particularly  their  exploits  which  the 
sagas  and  poems  celebrate.  Viking  warfare  was  no  mere 
clash  of  swords;  they  conducted  their  military  opera- 
tions with  skill  and  foresight,  and  showed  great  power 
of  adapting  themselves  to  new  conditions,  whether  that 
meant  the  invasion  of  an  open  country  or  the  siege  of  a 
fortified  town.  Much,  however,  must  be  credited  to  their 
furor  Teutonicus,  to  that  exuberance  of  military  spirit 
which  they  had  inherited  from  far-off  ancestors.  Not 
all  were  wolf-coated  Bearsarks,  but  all  seemed  to  have 
that  delight  in  war  and  conflict  for  their  own  sakes 
which  breathes  through  their  poetry:  — 

The  sword  in  the  king’s  hand  bit  through  the  weeds  of 
Woden  [mail]  as  if  it  were  whisked  through  water,  the  spear- 
points  clashed,  the  shields  were  shattered,  the  axes  rattled 
on  the  heads  of  the  warriors.  Targets  and  skulls  were  trod- 

1 Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale,  i,  pp.  236-40. 


4o  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

den  under  the  Northmen’s  shield-fires  [weapons]  and  the 
hard  heels  of  their  hilts.  There  was  a din  in  the  island,  the 
kings  dyed  the  shining  rows  of  shields  in  the  blood  of  men. 
The  wound-fires  [blades]  burnt  in  the  bloody  wounds,  the 
halberds  bowed  down  to  take  the  life  of  men,  the  ocean  of  gore 
dashed  upon  the  swords’-ness,  the  flood  of  the  shafts  fell 
upon  the  beach  of  Stord.  Halos  of  war  mixed  under  the 
vault  of  the  bucklers;  the  battle-tempest  blew  underneath 
the  clouds  of  the  targets,  the  lees  of  the  sword-edges  [blood] 
pattered  in  the  gale  of  Woden.  Many  a man  fell  into  the 
stream  of  the  brand.1 

Again:  — 

Brands  broke  against  the  black  targets,  wounds  waxed 
when  the  princes  met.  The  blades  hammered  against  the 
helm-crests,  the  wound-gravers,  the  sword’s  point,  bit.  I 
heard  that  there  fell  in  the  iron-play  Woden’s  oak  [heroes] 
before  the  swords  [the  sword-belt’s  ice]. 

Second  Burden : There  was  a linking  of  points  and  a gnash- 
ing of  edges:  Eric  got  renown  there. 

Second  Stave:  The  prince  reddened  the  brand,  there  was 
a meal  for  the  ravens;  the  javelin  sought  out  the  life  of 
man,  the  gory  spears  flew,  the  destroyer  of  the  Scots  fed 
the  steed  of  the  witch  [wolves],  the  sister  of  Nari  [Hell] 
trampied  on  the  supper  of  the  eagles  [corses].  The  cranes  of 
battle  [shafts]  flew  against  the  walls  of  the  sword  [bucklers], 
the  wound-mew’s  lips  [the  arrows’  barbs]  were  not  left  thirsty 
for  gore.  The  wolf  tore  the  wounds,  and  the  wave  of  the 
sword  [blood]  plashed  against  the  beak  of  the  raven. 

Third  Burden:  The  lees  of  the  din  of  war  [blood]  fell  upon 
Gialf ’s  steed  [ship] : Eric  gave  the  wolves  carrion  by  the  sea. 

Third  Stave:  The  flying  javelin  bit,  peace  was  belied  there, 
the  wolf  was  glad,  and  the  bow  was  drawn,  the  bolts  clat- 
tered, the  spear-points  bit,  the  flaxen-bowstring  bore  the 

1 Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale , i,  p.  265/. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  41 

arrows  out  of  the  bow.  He  brandished  the  buckler  on  his 
arm,  the  rouser  of  the  play  of  blades  — he  is  a mighty  hero. 
The  fray  grew  greater  everywhere  about  the  king.  It  was 
famed  east  over  the  sea,  Eric’s  war-faring.1 

Or  listen  to  the  weird  sisters  as  they  weave  the  web  of 
Ireland’s  fate  under  Brian  Boru:  — 

Wide-stretched  is  the  warp  presaging  the  slaughter,  the 
hanging  cloud  of  the  beam;  it  is  raining  blood.  The  gray  web 
of  the  hosts  is  raised  up  on  the  spears,  the  web  which  we 
the  friends  of  Woden  are  filling  with  red  weft. 

This  web  is  warped  with  the  guts  of  men,  and  heavily 
weighted  with  human  heads;  blood-stained  darts  are  the 
shafts,  iron-bound  are  the  stays;  it  is  shuttled  with  arrows. 
Let  us  strike  with  our  swords  this  web  of  victory ! 

War  and  Sword-clasher,  Sangrid  and  Swipple,  are  weaving 
with  drawn  swords.  The  shaft  shall  sing,  the  shield  shall 
ring,  the  helm-hound  [axe]  shall  fall  on  the  target.2 

And  those  who  met  their  death  in  battle  had  reserved 
for  them  a similar  existence  in  the  life  to  come,  not 
doomed  like  the  ‘ straw-dead  ’ to  tread  wet  and  chill  and 
dusky  ways  to  the  land  of  Hel,  but  — I am  quoting 
Gummere  3 — as  weapon-dead  faring  “straightway  to 
Odin,  unwasted  by  sickness,  in  the  full  strength  of  man- 
hood,” to  spend  their  days  in  glorious  battle  and  their 
nights  in  equally  glorious  feasting  in  the  courts  of  Val- 
halla. 

In  his  cradle  the  young  Viking  was  lulled  by  such 
songs  as  this:  — 

1 Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale , I,  pp.  268-70.  1 2 Ibid.,  I,  p.  281  /. 

3 Germanic  Origins  (New  York,  1892),  p.  305/. 


42  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

My  mother  said  they  should  buy  me  a boat  and  fair  oars, 
and  that  I should  go  abroad  with  the  Vikings,  should  stand 
forward  in  the  bows  and  steer  a dear  bark,  and  so  wend  to  the 
haven  and  cut  down  man  after  man  there. 

When  he  grows  up  the  earl’s  daughter  scorns  him  as  a 
boy  who  “has  never  given  a warm  meal  to  the  wolf,” 
“seen  the  raven  in  autumn  scream  over  the  carrion 
draft,”  or  “been  where  the  shell-thin  edges”  of  the 
blades  crossed ; whereupon  he  wins  a place  by  her  side 
by  replying:  — 

I have  walked  with  bloody  brand  and  with  whistling 
spear,  with  the  wound-bird  following  me.  The  Vikings  made 
a fierce  attack;  we  raised  a furious  storm,  the  flame  ran  over 
the  dwellings  of  men,  we  laid  the  bleeding  corses  to  rest  in 
the  gates  of  the  city.1 

And  at  the  end,  like  Ragnar  Lodbrok  captured  and  dy- 
ing in  the  pit  of  serpents,  he  can  tell  his  tale  of  feeding 
the  eagle  and  the  she-wolf  since  he  first  reddened  the 
sword  at  the  age  of  twenty,  and  end  his  life  undaunted  to 
the  ever-recurring  refrain,  “We  hewed  with  the  sword”: 

Death  has  no  terrors.  I am  willing  to  depart.  They  are 
calling  me  home,  the  Fays  whom  Woden  the  Lord  of  Hosts 
has  sent  me  from  his  hall.  Merrily  shall  I drink  ale  in  my 
high-seat  with  the  Anses.  My  life  days  are  done.  Laughing 
will  I die.2 

Politically,  Viking  society  was  aristocratic,  but  an 
aristocracy  in  which  all  the  nobles  were  equal.  “We 
have  no  lord,  we  are  all  equal,”  said  Rollo’s  men  when 
1 Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale,  I,  p.  373.  2 Ibid.,  11,  p.  345. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  43 

asked  who  was  their  lord ; and  men  thus  minded  were  not 
likely  to  spend  their  time  casting  dice  in  King  Harold’s 
court,  even  if  their  independence  meant  the  wolf’s  lot 
of  exile.  What  kind  of  a political  organization  they 
were  likely  to  form  can  be  seen  from  two  examples  of 
the  Viking  age.  One  is  Iceland,  described  by  Lord 
Bryce  1 as  “an  almost  unique  instance  of  a community 
whose  culture  and  creative  power  flourished  indepen- 
dently of  any  favoring  material  conditions,”  — that 
curiously  decentralized  and  democratic  commonwealth 
where  the  necessities  of  life  created  a government  with 
judicial  and  legislative  duties,  while  the  feeling  of  equal- 
ity and  local  independence  prevented  the  government 
from  acquiring  any  administrative  or  executive  func- 
tions, — a community  with  “ a great  deal  of  law  and  no 
central  executive,  a great  many  courts  and  no  authority 
to  carry  out  their  judgments.”  The  other  example  is 
Jomburg,  that  strange  body  of  Jomvikings  established 
in  Pomerania,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Oder,  and  held  by  a 
military  gild  under  the  strictest  discipline.  Only  men  of 
undoubted  bravery  between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and 
fifty  were  admitted  to  membership;  no  women  were 
allowed  in  the  castle,  and  no  man  could  be  absent  from 
it  for  more  than  three  days  at  a time.  Members  as- 
sumed the  duty  of  mutual  support  and  revenge,  and 
plunder  was  to  be  distributed  by  lot. 

1 “ Primitive  Iceland,”  in  his  Studies  in  History  and  Jurisprudence 
(Oxford,  1901),  pp.  263/. 


44  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Neither  of  these  types  of  Viking  community  was  to  be 
reproduced  in  Normandy,  for  both  were  the  outgrowth 
of  peculiar  local  conditions,  and  the  Northmen  were 
too  adaptable  to  found  states  with  a rubber-stamp.  A 
loose  half-state  like  Iceland  could  exist  only  where  the 
absence  of  neighbors  or  previous  inhabitants  removed 
all  danger  of  complications,  whether  domestic  or  foreign. 
A strict  warrior  gild  like  that  of  Jomburg  could  arise 
only  in  a fortress.  Whatever  form  Viking  society  would 
take  in  Normandy  was  certain  to  be  determined  in  large 
measure  by  local  conditions;  yet  it  might  well  contain 
elements  found  in  the  other  societies  — the  Icelandic 
sense  of  equality  and  independence,  and  the  military 
discipline  of  the  Jomvikings  set  in  the  midst  of  their 
Wendish  foes.  And  both  of  these  elements  are  character- 
istic of  the  Norman  state. 

Such,  very  briefly  sketched,  were  the  Northmen  who 
came  to  Normandy.  We  have  now  to  follow  them  in 
their  new  home. 

We  must  note  in  the  first  place  that  the  relations  be- 
tween Normandy  and  the  north  were  not  ended  with 
the  grant  of  91 1.  We  must  think  of  the  new  Norman 
state,  not  as  a planet  sent  off  into  space  to  move  sepa- 
rate and  apart  in  a new  orbit,  but  as  a colony,  an  out- 
post of  the  Scandinavian  peoples  in  the  south,  fed  by 
new  bands  of  colonists  from  the  northern  home  and 
only  gradually  drawn  away  from  its  connections  with 
the  north  and  brought  into  the  political  system  of 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  45 

Frankish  Gaul  and  its  neighbors.  For  something  like 
a hundred  years  after  the  coming  of  Rollo  the  key  to 
Norman  history  is  found  in  this  fact  and  in  the  result- 
ing interplay  of  Scandinavian  and  Frankish  influences. 
The  very  grant  of  911  was  susceptible  of  being  differ- 
ently regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  two  parties. 
Charles  the  Simple  probably  thought  he  was  creating 
a new  fief  with  the  Norman  chief  as  his  vassal,  bound  to 
him  by  feudal  ties,  while  to  Rollo,  innocent  of  feudal 
ideas,  the  grant  may  well  have  seemed  a gift  outright 
to  be  held  by  himself  and  his  companions  as  land  was 
held  at  home.  From  one  point  of  view  a feudal  holding, 
from  another  an  independent  Scandinavian  state,  the 
contradiction  in  Normandy’s  position  explains  much  of 
its  early  history.  The  new  colony  was  saved  from  absorp- 
tion in  its  surroundings  by  continued  migration  from 
the  north;  before  it  became  Frankish  and  feudal  it  thus 
had  time  to  establish  itself  firmly  and  draw  tightly  the 
lines  which  separated  it  from  its  neighbors.  At  once  a 
Frankish  county  and  a Danish  colony,  it  slowly  formed 
itself  into  the  semi-independent  duchy  which  is  the  his- 
toric Normandy  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries. 

Although  Rollo  was  baptized  in  912  and  signalized 
his  conversion  by  extensive  grants  of  land  to  the  great 
churches  and  monasteries  of  his  new  territories,  his 
Christianity  sat  lightly  upon  him  and  left  him  a Norse 
sea-rover  at  heart  till  the  end,  when  he  sought  to  ap- 
pease the  powers  of  the  other  world,  not  only  by  gifts 


46  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

of  gold  to  the  church,  but  by  human  sacrifices  to  the 
northern  gods.  His  legislation,  so  far  as  it  can  be  re- 
constructed from  the  shadowy  accounts  of  later  histo- 
rians, was  fundamentally  Scandinavian  in  character,  and 
his  followers  guarded  jealously  the  northern  traditions 
of  equality  and  independence.  His  son,  William  Long- 
sword,  was  a more  Christian  and  Frankish  type,  but  his 
death,  celebrated  in  a Latin  poem  which  represents  the 
earliest  known  example  of  popular  epic  in  Normandy, 
was  the  signal  for  a Scandinavian  and  pagan  reaction. 
We  hear  of  fresh  arrivals  on  the  Seine,  Vikings  who  wor- 
shipped Thor  and  Odin,  of  an  independent  band  at 
Bayeux  under  a certain  Haigrold  or  Harold,  and  even  of 
appeals  for  reenforcements  from  the  Normans  to  the 
Northmen  beyond  the  sea.  The  dukes  of  Rouen,  says  the 
Saga  of  St.  Olaf,  “remember  well  their  kinship  with  the 
chiefs  of  Norway;  they  hold  them  in  such  honor  that 
they  have  always  been  the  best  friends  of  the  Norwe- 
gians, and  all  the  Norwegians  who  wish  find  refuge  in 
Normandy.”  Not  till  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury does  the  Scandinavian  immigration  come  to  an 
end  and  Normandy  stand  fully  on  its  own  feet. 

Not  until  the  eleventh  century  also  does  the  history 
of  Normandy  emerge  from  the  uncertain  period  of  legend 
and  tradition  and  reach  an  assured  basis  of  contempo- 
rary evidence.  Throughout  Europe,  the  tenth  century 
is  one  of  the  most  uncertain  and  obscure  of  all  the  Chris- 
tian centuries.  To  the  critic,  as  an  Oxford  don  distin- 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  47 

guished  for  knowledge  of  this  epoch  once  remarked,  its 
delightful  obscurity  makes  it  all  the  more  interesting, 
but  there  are  limits  to  the  delights  of  obscurity,  and  a 
French  scholar  who  has  tried  to  reconstruct  the  history 
of  this  period  in  Spain  finds  that  all  surviving  documen- 
tary sources  of  information  are  fabrications!  Matters 
are  not  so  bad  as  that  for  Normandy,  for  the  forgers 
there  chose  other  periods  in  which  to  place  their  prod- 
ucts, but  there  are  for  the  tenth  century  practically 
no  contemporary  documents  or  contemporary  Norman 
chronicles.  The  earliest  Norman  historian,  Dudo,  dean 
of  Saint-Quentin,  wrote  after  the  year  1000  and  had 
no  personal  knowledge  of  the  beginnings  of  the  Nor- 
man state.  Diffuse,  rhetorical,  credulous,  and  ready  to 
distort  events  in  order  to  glorify  the  ancestors  of 
the  Norman  dukes  who  were  his  patrons,  Dudo  is  any- 
thing but  a trustworthy  writer,  and  only  the  most  cir- 
cumspect criticism  can  glean  a few  facts  from  his  con- 
fused and  turgid  rhetoric.  Yet  he  was  copied  by  his 
Norman  successors,  in  prose  and  in  verse,  and  has  found 
his  defenders  among  patriotic  Normans  of  a more  mod- 
ern time.  Not  until  quite  recent  years  has  his  fundamen- 
tal untrustworthiness  been  fully  established,  and  with 
it  has  vanished  all  hope  of  any  detailed  knowledge  of 
early  Norman  history.  Only  with  the  eleventh  century 
do  we  reach  a solid  foundation  of  annals  and  charters 
in  the  reigns  of  the  princes  whom  Dudo  seeks  to  glorify 
in  the  person  of  their  predecessors.  And  when  we  reach 


48  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

this  period,  the  heroic  age  of  conquest  and  settlement  is 
over,  and  the  Normans  have  become  much  as  other 
Frenchmen. 

At  this  point  the  fundamental  question  forces  itself 
upon  us,  how  far  was  Normandy  affected  by  Scandi- 
navian influences?  What  in  race  and  language,  in  law 
and  custom,  was  the  contribution  of  the  north  to  Nor- 
mandy? And  the  answer  must  be  that  in  most  respects 
the  tangible  contribution  was  slight.  Whatever  may  have 
been  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  age  of  colonization  and 
settlement,  by  the  century  which  followed  the  Normans 
had  become  to  a surprising  degree  absorbed  by  their 
environment. 

It  is  now  generally  admitted,  says  Professor  Maitland,1 
that  for  at  least  half  a century  before  the  battle  of  Hastings, 
the  Normans  were  Frenchmen,  French  in  their  language, 
French  in  their  law,  proud  indeed  of  their  past  history,  very 
ready  to  fight  against  other  Frenchmen  if  Norman  home- 
rule  was  endangered,  but  still  Frenchmen,  who  regarded 
Normandy  as  a member  of  the  state  or  congeries  of  states 
that  owed  service,  we  can  hardly  say  obedience,  to  the  king 
at  Paris.  Their  spoken  language  was  French,  their  written 
language  was  Latin,  but  the  Latin  of  France;  the  style  of 
their  legal  documents  was  the  style  of  the  French  chancery; 
very  few  of  the  technical  terms  of  their  law  were  of  Scandi- 
navian origin.  When  at  length  the  ‘custom’  of  Normandy 
appears  in  writing,  it  takes  its  place  among  other  French 
customs,  and  this  although  for  a long  time  past  Normandy 
has  formed  one  of  the  dominions  of  a prince,  between  whom 
and  the  king  of  the  French  there  has  been  little  love  and 

1 Pollock  and  Maitland,  History  of  English  Law,  i,  p.  66. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  49 

frequent  war;  and  the  peculiar  characteristics  which  mark 
off  the  custom  of  Normandy  from  other  French  customs 
seem  due  much  rather  to  the  legislation  of  Henry  of  Anjou 
than  to  any  Scandinavian  tradition. 

The  law  of  Normandy  was  by  this  time  Frankish, 
and  its  speech  was  French.  Even  the  second  duke, 
William  Longsword,  found  it  necessary  to  send  his  son 
to  Bayeux  to  learn  Norse,  for  it  was  no  longer  spoken  at 
Rouen.  And  in  the  French  of  Normandy,  the  Norman 
dialect,  the  Scandinavian  element  is  astonishingly  small, 
as  careful  students  of  the  local  patois  tell  us.  Only  in 
one  department  of  life,  the  life  of  the  sea,  is  any  con- 
siderable Scandinavian  influence  discernible,  and  the 
historian  of  the  French  navy,  Bourel  de  la  Ronciere,  has 
some  striking  pages  on  the  survivals  of  the  language  of 
the  Norse  Vikings  in  the  daily  speech  of  the  French 
sailor  and  fisherman. 

The  question  of  race  is  more  difficult,  and  is  of  course 
quite  independent  of  the  question  of  language,  for  lan- 
guage, as  has  been  well  said,  is  not  a test  of  race  but 
a test  of  social  contact,  and  the  fundamental  physi- 
cal characteristics  of  race  are  independent  of  speech. 
“Skulls,”  says  Rhys, “are  harder  than  consonants,  and 
races  lurk  behind  when  languages  slip  away.”  On  this 
point  again  scientific  examination  is  unfavorable  to  ex- 
tended Scandinavian  influence.  Pronounced  northern 
types,  of  course,  occur,  — I remember,  on  my  first  jour- 
ney through  Normandy,  seeing  at  a wayside  station  a 


50  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

peasant  who  might  have  walked  that  moment  out  of  a 
Wisconsin  lumber-camp  or  a Minnesota  wheat-field,  — 
but  the  statistics  of  anthropometry  show  a steady  pre- 
ponderance of  the  round-headed  type  which  prevails 
in  other  parts  of  France.  Only  in  two  regions  does  the 
Teutonic  type  assert  itself  strongly,  in  the  lower  valley 
of  the  Seine  and  in  the  Cotentin,  and  it  is  in  these  re- 
gions and  at  points  along  the  shore  that  place-names 
of  Scandinavian  origin  are  most  frequent.  The  termi- 
nations bee  and  fleur,  beuf  and  ham  and  dalle  and  tot  — 
Bolbec,  Harfleur,  Quillebeuf,  Ouistreham,  Dieppedalle, 
Yvetot  — tell  the  same  story  as  the  terms  used  in  navi- 
gation, namely  that  the  Northmen  were  men  of  the  sea 
and  settled  in  the  estuaries  and  along  the  coast.  The 
earlier  population,  however,  though  reduced  by  war  and 
pillage  and  famine,  was  not  extinguished.  It  survived 
in  sufficient  numbers  to  impose  its  language  on  its  con- 
querors, to  preserve  throughout  the  greater  part  of  the 
country  its  fundamental  racial  type,  and  to  make  these 
Northmen  of  the  sea  into  Normans  of  the  land. 

What,  then,  was  the  Scandinavian  contribution  to  the 
making  of  Normandy  if  it  was  neither  law  nor  speech 
nor  race?  First  and  foremost,  it  was  Normandy  itself, 
created  as  a distinct  entity  by  the  Norman  occupa- 
tion and  the  grant  to  Rollo  and  his  followers,  without 
whom  it  would  have  remained  an  undifferentiated  part 
of  northern  France.  Next,  a new  element  in  the  popu- 
lation, numerically  small  in  proportion  to  the  mass,  but 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  NORTHMEN  51 

a leaven  to  the  whole  — quick  to  absorb  Frankish  law 
and  Christian  culture  but  retaining  its  northern  quali- 
ties of  enterprise,  of  daring,  and  of  leadership.  It  is  no 
accident  that  the  names  of  the  leaders  in  early  Norman 
movements  are  largely  Norse.  And  finally  a race  of 
princes,  high-handed  and  masterful  but  with  a talent 
for  political  organization,  state-builders  at  home  and 
abroad,  who  made  Normandy  the  strongest  and  most 
centralized  principality  in  France  and  joined  to  it  a 
kingdom  beyond  the  seas  which  became  the  strongest 
state  in  western  Europe. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

The  best  outline  of  the  beginnings  of  Normandy  is  H.  Prentout, 
Essai  sur  les  origines  et  la  fondation  du  duche  de  Normandie  (Paris, 
1911).  For  the  Frankish  side  of  the  Norse  expeditions  see  W.  Vogel, 
Die  Normannen  und  das  frdnkische  Reich  (Heidelberg,  1906),  supple- 
mented by  F.  Lot,  in  the  BibliothZque  de  I'Ecole  des  Chartes,  lxix 
(1908).  Their  devastation  of  Normandy  is  illustrated  by  the  fate  of 
the  monastery  of  Saint-Wandrille : F.  Lot,  Etudes  critiques  sur  Vabbaye 
de  Saint-Wandrille  (Paris,  1913),  ch.  3.  There  is  a vast  literature  in 
the  Scandinavian  languages;  for  the  titles  of  fundamental  works  by 
Steenstrup,  Munch,  Worsaae,  and  Alexander  Bugge,  see  Charles 
Gross,  Sources  and  Literature  of  English  History  (London,  1915),  § 42. 
Considerable  material  in  English  has  been  published  in  the  Saga-Book 
of  the  Viking  Society  (London,  since  1895).  On  the  material  culture 
of  the  north  see  Sophus  Muller,  Nordische  Altertumskunde  (Strass- 
burg,  1897-98),  and  the  various  works  of  Montelius.  The  early  poetry 
is  collected  and  translated  by  Vigfusson  and  Powell,  Corpus  Poeticum 
Boreale  (Oxford,  1883).  Convenient  summaries  in  English  are  C.  F. 
Keary,  The  Vikings  in  Western  Christendom  (London,  1891);  A. 
Mawer,  The  Vikings  (Cambridge,  1913) ; and  L.  M.  Larson,  Canute  the 
Great  (New  York,  1912). 


Ill 

NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 

AFTER  the  coming  of  the  Northmen  the  chief 
event  in  Norman  history  is  the  conquest  of 
England,  and  just  as  relations  with  the  north 
are  the  chief  feature  of  the  tenth  century,  so  relations 
with  England  dominate  the  eleventh  century,  and  the 
central  point  is  the  conquest  of  1066.  In  this  series  of 
events  the  central  figure  is,  of  course,  William  the  Con- 
queror, by  descent  duke  of  Normandy  and  by  conquest 
king  of  England. 

Of  William’s  antecedents  we  have  no  time  to  speak 
at  length.  Grandson  of  the  fourth  Norman  duke, 
Richard  the  Good,  William  was  the  son  of  Duke  Robert, 
who  met  his  death  in  Asia  Minor  in  1035  while  return- 
ing from  a pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem.  To  distinguish  him 
from  the  later  duke  of  the  same  name  he  is  called  Robert 
I or  Robert  the  Magnificent,  sometimes  and  quite  in- 
correctly, Robert  the  Devil,  by  an  unwarranted  confu- 
sion with  this  hero,  or  rather  villain,  of  romance  and 
grand  opera.  A contemporary  of  the  great  English  king 
Canute,  Robert  was  a man  of  renown  in  the  Europe  of 
the  early  eleventh  century,  and  if  our  sources  of  in- 
formation permitted  us  to  know  the  history  of  his  brief 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


53 


reign,  we  should  probably  find  that  much  that  was  dis- 
tinctive of  the  Normandy  of  his  son’s  day  can  be  traced 
back  to  his  time.  More  than  once  in  history  has  a great 
father  been  eclipsed  by  a greater  son.  The  fact  should 
be  added,  which  William’s  contemporaries  never  al- 
lowed him  to  forget,  that  he  was  an  illegitimate  son.  His 
mother  Arlette  was  the  daughter  of  a tanner  of  Falaise, 
and  while  it  is  not  clear  that  Duke  Robert  was  ever  mar- 
ried to  any  one  else,  his  union  with  Arlette  had  no  higher 
sanction  than  the  Danish  custom  of  his  forefathers. 
Their  son  was  generally  known  in  his  day  as  William 
the  Bastard,  and  only  the  great  achievements  of  his 
reign  succeeded  in  replacing  this,  first  by  William  the 
Great  and  later  by  William  the  Conqueror. 

Were  it  not  for  the  resulting  confusion  with  other 
great  Williams,  — one  of  whom  has  recently  been  raised 
by  admiring  subjects  to  the  rank  of  William  the  Great- 
est!— there  would  be  a certain  advantage  in  retain- 
ing the  title  of  great,  in  order  to  remind  ourselves  that 
William  was  not  only  a conqueror  but  a great  ruler.  The 
greatest  secular  figure  in  the  Europe  of  his  day,  he  is 
also  one  of  the  greatest  in  the  line  of  English  sovereigns, 
whether  we  judge  him  by  capacity  for  rule  or  by  the  re- 
sults of  his  reign,  and  none  has  had  a more  profound  ef- 
fect on  the  whole  current  of  English  history.  The  late 
Edward  A.  Freeman,  who  devoted  five  stout  volumes  to 
the  history  of  the  Norman  Conquest  and  of  William,  and 
who  n iver  shrank  from  superlatives,  goes  still  further: — 


54  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

No  man  that  ever  trod  this  earth  was  ever  endowed  with 
greater  natural  gifts;  to  no  man  was  it  ever  granted  to  ac- 
complish greater  things.  If  we  look  only  to  the  scale  of  a 
man’s  acts  without  regard  to  their  moral  character,  we  must 
hail  in  the  victor  of  Val-es-dunes,  of  Varaville,  and  of  Senlac, 
in  the  restorer  of  Normandy,  the  Conqueror  of  England,  one 
who  may  fairly  claim  his  place  in  the  first  rank  of  the  world’s 
greatest  men.  No  man  ever  did  his  work  more  thoroughly 
at  the  moment;  no  man  ever  left  his  work  behind  him  as  more 
truly  an  abiding  possession  for  all  time.  ...  If  we  cannot 
give  him  a niche  among  pure  patriots  and  heroes,  he  is  quite 
as  little  entitled  to  a place  among  mere  tyrants  and  destroy- 
ers. William  of  Normandy  has  no  claim  to  a share  in  the  pure 
glory  of  Timoleon,  Alfred,  and  Washington;  he  cannot  even 
claim  the  more  mingled  fame  of  Alexander,  Charles,  and 
Cnut;  but  he  has  still  less  in  common  with  the  mere  ene- 
mies of  their  species,  with  the  Nabuchodonosors,  the  Swegens, 
and  the  Buonapartes,  whom  God  has  sent  from  time  to  time 
as  simple  scourges  of  a guilty  world.  . . . He  never  wholly 
cast  away  the  thoughts  of  justice  and  mercy,  and  in  his 
darkest  hours  had  still  somewhat  of  the  fear  of  God  before 
his  eyes.1 

I have  quoted  the  essence  of  Freeman’s  characteriza- 
tion, not  because  it  seems  to  me  wholly  just  or  even 
historical,  but  in  order  to  set  forth  vividly  the  im- 
portance of  William  and  his  work.  It  is  not  the  histo- 
rian’s business  to  award  niches  in  a hall  of  fame.  He  is 
no  Rhadamanthus,  to  separate  the  Alfreds  of  this  world 
from  the  Nebuchadnezzars,  the  Washingtons  from  the 
Napoleons.  So  far  as  he  deals  with  individuals,  his  busi- 
ness is  to  explain  to  us  each  man  in  the  light  of  his  time 
1 History  of  the  Norman  Conquest  (third  edition),  II,  pp.  164-67. 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


55 


and  its  conditions,  not  to  compare  him  with  men  of 
far  distant  times  and  places  in  order  to  arrange  all  in  a 
final  scale  of  values.  It  was  once  the  fashion  in  debating 
societies  to  discuss  whether  Demosthenes  was  a greater 
orator  than  Cicero,  and  whether  either  was  the  equal 
of  Daniel  Webster.  It  is  even  more  futile  to  consider 
whether  William  the  Conqueror  was  a greater  man  than 
Alexander  or  a less  than  George  Washington,  for  the 
quantities  are  incommensurable.  So  far  as  comparisons 
of  this  sort  are  at  all  legitimate,  they  must  be  instituted 
between  similar  things,  between  contemporaries  or  be- 
tween men  in  quick  sequence.  When  they  deal  with  wide 
intervals  of  time  and  circumstance,  they  wrest  each 
man  from  his  true  setting  and  become  fundamentally 
unhistorical. 

An  able  general,  strong  in  battle  and  still  stronger  in 
strategy  and  craft,  a skilful  diplomat,  a born  ruler  of 
men,  William  was  yet  greater  in  the  combination  of 
vision,  patience,  and  masterful  will  which  make  the 
statesman,  and  the  results  of  his  statesmanship  are 
writ  large  on  the  page  of  English  history.  To  his  con- 
temporaries his  most  striking  characteristic  was  his 
pitiless  strength  and  inflexible  will,  and  if  they  had  been 
familiar  with  Nietzsche’s  theory  of  the  ‘overman,’  they 
would  certainly  have  placed  him  in  that  class.  Stark 
and  stern  and  wrathful,  the  author  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle  approaches  him,  as  Freeman  well  says,1  “with 

1 Norman  Conquest , II,  p.  166. 


56  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

downcast  eyes  and  bated  breath,  as  if  he  were  hardly 
dealing  with  a man  of  like  passions  with  himself  but 
were  rather  drawing  the  portrait  of  a being  of  another 
nature.' 1 This,  the  most  adequate  characterization  of 
the  Uebermensch  of  the  eleventh  century,  runs  as  fol- 
lows: 1 

If  any  would  know  what  manner  of  man  king  William 
was,  the  glory  that  he  obtained,  and  of  how  many  lands  he 
was  lord;  then  will  we  describe  him  as  we  have  known  him, 
we,  who  have  looked  upon  him  and  who  once  lived  in  his 
court.  This  king  William,  of  whom  we  are  speaking,  was  a 
very  wise  and  a great  man,  and  more  honoured  and  more 
powerful  than  any  of  his  predecessors.  He  was  mild  to  those 
good  men  who  loved  God,  but  severe  beyond  measure  towards 
those  who  withstood  his  will.  He  founded  a noble  monastery 
on  the  spot  where  God  permitted  him  to  conquer  England, 
and  he  established  monks  in  it,  and  he  made  it  very  rich.  In 
his  days  the  great  monastery  at  Canterbury  was  built,  and 
many  others  also  throughout  England;  moreover  this  land 
was  filled  with  monks  who  lived  after  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict; 
and  such  was  the  state  of  religion  in  his  days  that  all  that 
would  might  observe  that  which  was  prescribed  by  their 
respective  orders.  King  William  was  also  held  in  much 
reverence:  he  wore  his  crown  three  times  every  year  when 
he  was  in  England : at  Easter  he  wore  it  at  Winchester,  at 
Pentecost  at  Westminster,  and  at  Christmas  at  Gloucester. 
And  at  these  times,  all  the  men  of  England  were  with  him, 
archbishops,  bishops,  abbots,  and  earls,  thanes,  and  knights. 
So  also,  was  he  a very  stern  and  a wrathful  man,  so  that 
none  durst  do  anything  against  his  will,  and  he  kept  in  prison 
those  earls  who  acted  against  his  pleasure.  He  removed 
bishops  from  their  sees,  and  abbots  from  their  offices,  and 

1 Translated  by  Giles  (London,  1847),  pp.  461-63, 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


57 

he  imprisoned  thanes,  and  at  length  he  spared  not  his  own 
brother  Odo.  This  Odo  was  a very  powerful  bishop  in  Nor- 
mandy, his  see  was  that  of  Bayeux,  and  he  was  foremost  to 
serve  the  king.  He  had  an  earldom  in  England,  and  when 
William  was  in  Normandy  he  was  the  first  man  in  this  coun- 
try, and  him  did  he  cast  into  prison.  Amongst  other  things 
the  good  order  that  William  established  is  not  to  be  forgotten; 
it  was  such  that  any  man,  who  was  himself  aught,  might 
travel  over  the  kingdom  with  a bosom-full  of  gold  unmo- 
lested; and  no  man  durst  kill  another,  however  great  the 
injury  he  might  have  received  from  him.  He  reigned  over 
England,  and  being  sharp-sighted  to  his  own  interest,  he  sur- 
veyed the  kingdom  so  thoroughly  that  there  was  not  a single 
hide  of  land  throughout  the  whole  of  which  he  knew  not  the 
possessor,  and  how  much  it  was  worth,  and  this  he  after- 
wards entered  in  his  register.  The  land  of  the  Britons  was 
under  his  sway,  and  he  built  castles  therein;  moreover  he  had 
full  dominion  over  the  Isle  of  Man  [Anglesey]:  Scotland 
also  was  subject  to  him  from  his  great  strength;  the  land  of 
Normandy  was  his  by  inheritance,  and  he  possessed  the 
earldom  of  Maine;  and  had  he  lived  two  years  longer  he 
would  have  subdued  Ireland  by  his  prowess,  and  that  with- 
out a battle.  Truly  there  was  much  trouble  in  these  times, 
and  very  great  distress;  he  caused  castles  to  be  built,  and 
oppressed  the  poor.  The  king  was  also  of  great  sternness, 
and  he  took  from  his  subjects  many  marks  of  gold,  and  many 
hundred  pounds  of  silver,  and  this,  either  with  or  without 
right,  and  with  little  need.  He  was  given  to  avarice,  and 
greedily  loved  gain.  He  made  large  forests  for  the  deer,  and 
enacted  laws  therewith,  so  that  whoever  killed  a hart  or  a 
hind  should  be  blinded.  As  he  forbade  killing  the  deer,  so 
also  the  boars;  and  he  loved  the  tall  stags  as  if  he  were  their 
father.  He  also  appointed  concerning  the  hares,  that  they 
should  go  free.  The  rich  complained  and  the  poor  murmured, 
but  he  was  so  sturdy  that  he  recked  nought  of  them;  they 


58  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

must  will  all  that  the  king  willed,  if  they  would  live;  or 
would  keep  their  lands;  or  would  hold  their  possessions;  or 
would  be  maintained  in  their  rights.  Alas ! that  any  man 
should  so  exalt  himself,  and  carry  himself  in  his  pride  over  all ! 
May  Almighty  God  show  mercy  to  his  soul,  and  grant  him 
the  forgiveness  of  his  sins!  We  have  written  concerning 
him  these  things,  both  good  and  bad,  that  virtuous  men  might 
follow  after  the  good,  and  wholly  avoid  the  evil,  and  might 
go  in  the  way  that  leadeth  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

This  Requiescat  of  the  monk  of  Peterborough  has 
carried  us  forward  half  a century,  till  the  Conqueror,  in 
the  full  maturity  of  his  power  and  strength,  rode  to  his 
death  down  the  steep  street  of  the  burning  town  of 
Mantes  and  was  buried  in  his  own  great  abbey-church 
at  Caen.  And  the  good  peace  that  he  gave  the  land  at 
the  end  came,  both  in  Normandy  and  in  England,  only 
after  many  stormy  years  of  war,  rebellion,  and  strife. 
William  was  but  sixty  when  he  died ; when  his  father  was 
laid  away  in  the  basilica  of  far-off  Nicsea,  he  was  only 
seven  or  at  most  eight.  The  conquest  of  England  was 
made  in  his  fortieth  year,  when  he  had  already  reigned 
thirty-one  years  as  duke.  Or,  if  we  deduct  the  years  of 
his  youth,  the  conquest  of  England  falls  just  halfway 
between  his  coming  of  age  and  his  death.  I give  these 
figures  to  adjust  the  perspective.  William’s  place  in  the 
line  of  English  kings  is  so  prominent  and  his  achieve- 
ments in  England  are  so  important  that  they  always 
tend  to  overshadow  in  our  minds  his  earlier  years  as 
duke.  Yet  without  these  formative  years  there  could 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


59 

have  been  no  conquest  of  England,  and  without  some 
study  of  them  that  conquest  cannot  be  understood. 

If  we  pass  over  rapidly,  as  for  lack  of  information  we 
must  needs  do,  the  dozen  years  of  William’s  minority,  we 
find  his  reign  in  Normandy  chiefly  occupied  with  his 
struggles  with  his  vassals,  his  neighbors,  and  the  king 
of  France,  all  a necessary  consequence  of  his  feudal 
position  as  duke.  The  Norman  vassals,  always  tur- 
bulent and  rebellious,  seem  to  have  broken  forth  anew 
upon  the  death  of  Robert  the  Magnificent,  and  such 
accounts  as  have  reached  us  of  the  events  of  the  next 
twelve  years  reveal  a constant  state  of  anarchy  and  dis- 
order. The  revolt  of  the  barons  came  to  a head  in  1047, 
when  the  whole  of  Lower  Normandy  rose  under  the 
leadership  of  the  two  chief  vicomtes  of  the  region,  Ranulf 
of  Bayeux  and  Neel  of  Saint-Sauveur,  the  ruins  of  whose 
family  castle  of  Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte  still  greet 
the  traveller  who  leaves  Cherbourg  for  Paris.  William, 
who  was  hunting  in  the  neighborhood  of  Valognes,  was 
obliged  to  flee  half-clad  in  the  night  and  to  pick  his  way 
alone  by  devious  paths  across  the  enemy’s  country  to 
his  castle  of  Falaise.  With  the  assistance  of  the  French 
king  he  was  able  to  collect  an  army  from  Upper  Nor- 
mandy and  meet  the  rebels  on  the  great  plain  of  Val-des- 
Dunes,  near  Caen,  where  the  Mont-joie  of  the  French 
and  the  Dex  aie  of  the  duke’s  followers  answered  the 
barons’  appeals  to  their  local  saints  of  St.  Sauveur, 
St.  Sever,  and  St.  Amand.  William  was  victorious;  the 


6o  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


leaders  of  the  revolt  were  sent  into  exile,  but  one  of 
them,  Grimoud  of  Plessis,  the  traitor,  apparently  he 
who  had  sought  William’s  death  in  the  night  at  Va- 
lognes,  was  put  in  prison  at  Rouen  in  irons  which  he 
wore  until  his  death. 

With  the  collapse  of  the  great  revolt  and  the  razing 
of  the  castles  of  the  revolting  barons,  Normandy  began 
to  enjoy  a period  of  internal  peace  and  order.  Externally, 
however,  difficulties  rather  increased  with  the  growing 
power  of  the  young  duke.  In  discussions  of  feudal  soci- 
ety it  is  too  often  assumed  that  if  the  feudal  obligations 
are  observed  between  lords  and  vassals,  all  will  go  well, 
and  that  the  anarchy  of  which  the  Middle  Ages  are  full 
was  the  result  of  violations  of  these  feudal  ties.  Now, 
while  undoubtedly  a heavy  account  must  be  laid  at  the 
door  of  direct  breaches  of  the  feudal  bond,  it  must  also 
be  remembered  that  there  was  a fundamental  defect 
in  the  very  structure  of  feudal  society.  We  may  express 
this  defect  by  saying  that  the  feudal  ties  were  only  verti- 
cal and  not  lateral.  The  lord  was  bound  to  his  vassal  and 
the  vassal  to  his  lord,  and  so  far  as  these  relations  went 
they  provided  a nexus  of  social  and  legal  relations  which 
might  hold  society  together.  But  there  was  no  tie  be- 
tween two  vassals  of  the  same  lord,  nothing  whatever 
which  bound  one  of  them  to  live  in  peace  and  amity  with 
the  other.  Quite  the  contrary.  War  being  the  normal 
state  of  European  society  in  the  feudal  period,  the  right 
to  carry  on  private  war  was  one  of  the  cherished  rights 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


61 


of  the  feudal  baron,  and  it  extended  wherever  it  was  not 
restricted  by  the  bonds  of  fealty  and  vassalage.  The 
duke  of  Normandy  and  the  count  of  Anjou  were  both 
vassals  of  the  king  of  France,  but  their  relations  to  each 
other  were  those  of  complete  independence,  and,  save 
for  some  special  agreement  or  friendship,  were  normally 
relations  of  hostility. 

And  so  an  important  part  of  Norman  history  has  to 
treat  of  the  struggles  with  the  duchy’s  neighbors,  Flan- 
ders on  the  north,  the  royal  domain  on  the  east,  Maine 
and  Anjou  to  the  southward,  and  Brittany  on  the  west. 
Fortunately  for  Normandy,  the  Bretons  were  but  loosely 
organized,  while  the  Flemings,  compacted  into  one  of 
the  strongest  of  the  French  fiefs,  were  generally  friendly, 
and  the  friendship  was  in  this  period  cemented  by  Wil- 
liam’s marriage  to  Matilda,  daughter  of  the  count  of 
Flanders,  one  of  the  few  princely  marriages  of  the  time 
which  was  founded  upon  affection  and  observed  with 
fidelity.  With  Anjou  the  case  was  different.  Beginning 
as  a border  county  over  against  the  Bretons  of  the  lower 
Loire,  with  the  black  rock  of  Angers  as  its  centre  and 
fortress,  Anjou,  though  still  comparatively  small  in 
area,  had  grown  into  one  of  the  strongest  states  of  west- 
ern France.  Under  a remarkable  line  of  counts,  Geof- 
frey Greygown,  Fulk  the  Red,  and  Fulk  the  Black,  an- 
cestors of  the  Plantagenet  kings  of  England,  it  had 
become  the  dominant  power  on  the  Loire,  and  now  under 
their  successor  Geoffrey  the  Hammer  it  threatened 


62  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


further  expansion  by  hammering  its  frontiers  still  fur- 
ther to  the  north  and  east.  Geoffrey,  William’s  contem- 
porary and  rival,  is  known  to  us  by  a striking  charac- 
terization written  by  his  nephew  and  successor  and 
forming  a typical  bit  of  feudal  biography:  1 

My  uncle  Geoffrey  became  a knight  in  his  father's  life- 
time and  began  his  knighthood  by  wars  against  his  neighbors, 
one  against  the  Poitevins,  whose  count  he  captured  at  Mont 
Couer,  and  another  against  the  people  of  Maine,  whose  count, 
named  Herbert  Bacon,  he  likewise  took.  He  also  carried  on 
war  against  his  own  father,  in  the  course  of  which  he  com- 
mitted many  evil  deeds  of  which  he  afterward  bitterly  re- 
pented. After  his  father  died  on  his  return  from  Jerusalem, 
Geoffrey  possessed  his  lands  and  the  city  of  Angers,  and 
fought  Count  Thibaud  of  Blois,  son  of  Count  Odo,  and  by 
gift  of  King  Henry  received  the  city  of  Tours,  which  led 
to  another  war  with  Count  Thibaud,  in  the  course  of  which, 
at  a battle  between  Tours  and  Amboise,  Thibaud  was  cap- 
tured with  a thousand  of  his  knights.  And  so,  besides  the 
part  of  Touraine  inherited  from  his  father,  he  acquired 
Tours  and  the  castles  round  about  — Chinon,  L’lle-Bou- 
chard,  Chateaurenault,  and  Saint-Aignan.  After  this  he  had  a 
war  with  William,  count  of  the  Normans,  who  later  acquired 
the  kingdom  of  England  and  was  a magnificent  king,  and 
with  the  people  of  France  and  of  Bourges,  and  with  William 
count  of  Poitou  and  Aimeri  viscount  of  Thouars  and  Hoel 
count  of  Nantes  and  the  Breton  counts  of  Rennes  and  with 
Hugh  count  of  Maine,  who  had  thrown  off  his  fealty.  Because 
of  all  these  wars  and  the  prowess  he  showed  therein  he  was 
rightly  called  the  Hammer,  as  one  who  hammered  down  his 
enemies. 

1 Fulk  Rechin,  in  Ckroniques  des  comtes  d' Anjou  (ed.  Marchegay),  p. 
378 /;  (ed.  Haiphen  and  Poupardin,  Paris,  1913),  pp.  235-37. 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  63 

In  the  last  year  of  his  life  he  made  me  his  nephew  a knight 
at  the  age  of  seventeen  in  the  city  of  Angers,  at  the  feast 
of  Pentecost,  in  the  year  of  the  Incarnation  1060,  and  granted 
me  Saintonge  and  the  city  of  Saintes  because  of  a quarrel 
he  had  with  Peter  of  Didonne.  In  this  same  year  King  Henry 
died  on  the  nativity  of  St.  John,  and  my  uncle  Geoffrey 
on  the  third  day  after  Martinmas  came  to  a good  end. 
For  in  the  night  which  preceded  his  death,  laying  aside 
all  care  of  knighthood  and  secular  things,  he  became  a 
monk  in  the  monastery  of  St.  Nicholas,  which  his  father 
and  he  had  built  with  much  devotion  and  endowed  with 
their  goods. 

The  great  source  of  conflict  between  William  and 
Geoffrey  was  the  intervening  county  of  Maine,  whence 
the  Angevins  had  gained  possession  of  the  Norman 
fortresses  of  Domfront  and  Alengon,  and  it  was  not  till 
after  Geoffrey’s  death,  in  1063,  that  the  capture  of  its 
chief  city,  LeMans,  completed  that  union  of  Normandy 
and  Maine  which  was  to  last  through  the  greater  part 
of  Norman  history.  The  conquest  of  Maine  was  the 
first  fruit  of  William’s  work  as  conqueror. 

With  William’s  suzerain,  the  king  of  France,  rela- 
tions were  more  complicated.  Legally  there  could  be  no 
question  that  the  duke  of  Normandy  was  the  feudal 
vassal  of  the  French  king  and  as  such  bound  to  the  obli- 
gations of  loyalty  and  service  which  flowed  from  his 
oath  of  homage  and  fealty.  Actually,  in  the  society 
of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries,  such  bonds  were 
freely  and  frequently  broken,  yet  they  were  not  thrown 
off.  Here,  as  in  many  other  phases  of  mediaeval  life, 


64  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

we  meet  that  persistent  contradiction  between  theory 
and  practice  which  shocks  our  more  consistent  minds. 
Just  as  the  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  tolerated  a Holy 
Roman  Empire  which  claimed  universal  dominion  and 
often  exercised  only  the  most  local  and  rudimentary  au- 
thority, so  they  accepted  a monarchy  like  that  of  the 
early  Capetians,  which  claimed  to  rule  over  the  whole  of 
France  and  was  limited  in  its  actual  government  to  a 
few  farms  and  castles  in  the  neighborhood  of  Paris. 
And  just  as  they  maintained  ideals  of  lofty  chivalry 
and  rigorous  asceticism  far  beyond  the  sordid  reality  of 
ordinary  knighthood  or  monkhood,  so  the  constant  vio- 
lation of  feudal  obligations  did  not  change  the  feudal 
bond  or  destroy  the  nexus  of  feudal  relations.  In  this 
age  of  unrestraint,  ferocious  savagery  alternated  with 
knightly  generosity,  and  ungovernable  rage  with  self- 
abasing  penance. 

At  such  times  the  relations  of  the  king  and  his  great 
feudatories  would  depend  very  largely  upon  personal 
temperament,  political  situations,  and  even  the  im- 
pulse of  the  moment,  and  we  must  not  expect  to  find 
such  purpose  and  continuity  in  policies  as  prevail  in 
more  settled  periods.  Nevertheless,  with  due  allowance 
for  momentary  variations,  the  relations  of  Normandy 
with  the  Capetian  kings  follow  comparatively  simple 
lines.  The  position  of  Normandy  in  the  Seine  valley 
and  its  proximity  to  the  royal  domain  offered  endless 
opportunity  for  friction,  yet  for  about  a century  strained 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  65 

relations  were  avoided  by  alliance  and  friendship  based 
upon  common  interest.  Hugh  Capet  came  to  the  throne 
with  the  support  of  the  Norman  duke,  and  his  successors 
often  found  their  mainstay  in  Norman  arms.  Robert  the 
Magnificent  on  his  departure  for  the  East  commended 
his  young  son  to  King  Henry,  and  the  heir  seems  to 
have  grown  up  under  the  king’s  guardianship.  It  was 
Henry  who  saved  William  from  his  barons  in  1047,  and 
it  was  William  that  furnished  over  half  the  king’s  sol- 
diers on  the  campaign  against  Anjou  in  the  following 
year.  Then,  about  the  middle  of  the  eleventh  century, 
comes  a change,  for  which  the  growing  power  and  in- 
fluence of  Normandy  furnish  a sufficient  explanation. 
Henry  supported  the  revolt  of  William  of  Arques  in 
1053  and  attempted  a great  invasion  of  Normandy  in 
the  same  year,  while  in  1058  he  burnt  and  pillaged  his 
way  into  the  heart  of  the  Norman  territory.  A waiting 
game  and  well-timed  attacks  defeated  these  efforts  at 
Mortemer  and  at  Varaville,  but  William  refused  to 
follow  up  his  advantage  by  a direct  attack  upon  his 
king,  whom  he  continued  to  treat  with  personal  con- 
sideration as  his  feudal  lord.  Even  after  William  him- 
self became  king,  he  seems  to  have  continued  to  render 
the  military  service  which  he  owed  as  duke.  By  this 
time,  however,  the  subjection  had  become  only  nominal ; 
merely  as  duke,  William  was  now  a more  powerful  ruler 
than  the  king  of  France,  and  the  Capetian  monarchy 
had  to  bide  its  time  for  more  than  a century  longer. 


66  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Before  we  can  leave  the  purely  Norman  period  of 
William’s  reign  and  turn  to  the  conquest  of  England, 
it  is  important  to  examine  the  internal  condition  of  Nor- 
mandy under  his  rule.  Even  the  most  thorough  study 
possible  of  this  subject  would  need  to  be  brief,  for  lack 
of  available  evidence.  Time  has  not  dealt  kindly  with 
Norman  records,  and  over  against  the  large  body  of 
Anglo-Saxon  charters  and  the  unique  account  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  England  preserved  in  the  Domesday  survey, 
contemporary  Normandy  can  set  only  a few  scattered 
documents  and  a curious  statement  of  the  duke’s  rights 
and  privileges  under  William,  drawn  up  four  years  after 
his  death  and  only  recently  recovered  as  an  authority  for 
his  reign.  The  sources  of  Norman  history  were  probably 
never  so  abundant  as  those  of  England ; certainly  there  is 
now  nothing  on  the  Continent,  outside  of  the  Vatican, 
that  can  compare  with  the  extraordinarily  full  and  con- 
tinuous series  of  the  English  public  records.  The  great 
gaps  in  the  Norman  records,  often  supposed  to  be  due 
to  the  Revolution,  really  appear  much  earlier.  Un- 
doubtedly there  was  in  many  places  wanton  destruc- 
tion of  documents  in  the  revolutionary  uprisings,  and 
there  were  many  losses  under  the  primitive  organiza- 
tion of  local  archives  in  this  period,  as  there  undoubt- 
edly were  during  the  carelessness  and  corruption  of  the 
Restoration.  Nevertheless,  an  examination  of  the  copies 
and  extracts  made  from  monastic  and  cathedral  archives 
by  the  scholars  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  67 

turies  shows  that,  with  a few  significant  exceptions,  the 
materials  for  early  Norman  history  were  little  richer  then 
than  now,  so  that  the  great  losses  must  have  occurred 
before  this  time,  that  is  to  say,  during  the  Middle  Ages 
and  in  the  devastation  of  the  English  invasion  and  of  the 
Protestant  wars  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  cathedral 
library  at  Bayeux,  for  example,  possesses  three  volumes 
of  a huge  cartulary  charred  by  the  fire  into  which  it  was 
thrown  when  the  town  was  sacked  by  the  Protestants. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  should  be  noted  that  the  French 
Revolution  accomplished  one  beneficent  result  for  local 
records  in  the  secularization  of  ecclesiastical  archives 
and  their  collection  into  the  great  repositories  of  the 
Archives  Departementales,  whose  organization  is  still 
the  envy  of  historical  scholars  across  the  Channel.  One 
who  has  enjoyed  for  many  months  access  to  these  admir- 
able collections  of  records  will  be  permitted  to  express 
his  gratitude  to  those  who  created  them,  as  well  as  to 
those  by  whom  they  are  now  so  courteously  adminis- 
tered. 

Piecing  together  our  scattered  information  regarding 
the  Normandy  of  the  eleventh  century,  we  note  at  the 
outset  that  it  was  a feudal  society,  that  is  to  say,  land 
was  for  the  most  part  held  of  a lord  by  hereditary  tenure 
on  condition  of  military  service.  Indeed  feudal  ideas 
had  spread  so  far  that  they  even  penetrated  the  church, 
so  that  in  some  instances  the  revenues  of  the  clergy 
had  been  granted  to  laymen  and  archdeaconries  and 


68  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


prebends  had  been  turned  into  hereditary  fiefs.  With 
feudal  service  went  the  various  incidents  of  feudal  ten- 
ure and  a well-developed  feudal  jurisdiction  of  the  lord 
over  his  tenants  and  of  the  greater  barons  over  the  less. 
In  all  this  there  is  nothing  to  distinguish  Normandy 
from  the  neighboring  countries  of  northern  France,  and 
as  a feudal  society  is  normally  a decentralized  society, 
we  should  expect  to  find  the  powers  of  government 
chiefly  in  the  hands  of  the  local  lords.  A closer  study, 
however,  shows  certain  peculiarities  which  are  of  the 
utmost  importance,  both  for  Norman  and  for  English 
history. 

First  of  all,  the  military  service  owing  to  the  duke 
had  been  systematically  assessed  in  rough  units  of  five  or 
ten  knights,  and  this  service,  or  its  subdivisions,  had  be- 
come attached  to  certain  pieces  of  land,  or  knights’  fees. 
The  amounts  of  service  were  fixed  by  custom  and  were 
regularly  enforced.  Still  more  significant  are  the  re- 
strictions placed  upon  the  military  power  of  the  barons. 
The  symbol  and  the  foundation  of  feudal  authority  was 
the  castle,  wherefore  the  duke  forbade  the  building  of 
castles  and  strongholds  without  his  license  and  required 
them  to  be  handed  over  to  him  on  demand.  Private  war 
and  the  blood  feud  could  not  yet  be  prohibited  entirely, 
but  they  were  closely  limited.  No  one  was  allowed  to  go 
out  to  seek  his  enemy  with  hauberk  and  standard  and 
sounding  horn.  Assaults  and  ambushes  were  not  per- 
mitted in  the  duke’s  forests;  captives  were  not  to  be 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  69 

taken  in  a feud,  nor  could  arms,  horses,  or  property  be 
carried  off  from  a combat.  Burning,  plunder,  and  waste 
were  forbidden  in  pursuing  claims  to  land,  and  except 
for  open  crime,  no  one  could  be  condemned  to  loss  of 
limb  unless  by  judgment  of  the  proper  ducal  or  baro- 
nial court.  Coinage,  generally  a valued  privilege  of  the 
greater  lords,  was  in  Normandy  a monopoly  of  the  duke. 
What  the  absence  of  such  restrictions  might  mean  is 
well  illustrated  in  England  in  the  reign  of  Stephen,  when 
private  war,  unlicensed  castles,  and  baronial  coinage 
appeared  as  the  chief  evils  of  an  unbridled  feudal 
anarchy. 

In  the  administration  of  justice,  in  spite  of  the  great 
franchises  of  the  barons,  the  duke  has  a large  reserved 
jurisdiction.  Certain  places  are  under  his  special  pro- 
tection, certain  crimes  put  the  offender  at  his  mercy. 
The  administrative  machinery,  though  in  many  respects 
still  primitive,  has  kept  pace  with  the  duke’s  authority. 
Whereas  the  Capetian  king  has  as  his  local  representa- 
tives only  the  semi-feudal  agents  on  his  farms,  the  Nor- 
man duke  has  for  purposes  of  local  government  a real 
public  officer,  the  vicomte,  commanding  his  troops,  guard- 
ing his  castles,  maintaining  order,  administering  jus- 
tice, and  collecting  the  ducal  revenues.  Nowhere  is  the 
superiority  of  the  Norman  dukes  over  their  royal  over- 
lords  more  clear  than  in  the  matter  of  finance.  The  house- 
keeping of  the  Capetian  king  of  the  eleventh  century  was 
still  what  the  Germans  call  a Naturalwirthschaft,  an 


70  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

economic  organization  based  upon  payment  in  produce 
and  labor  rather  than  in  money.  “Less  powerful  than 
certain  of  his  great  vassals,”  as  he  is  described  by  his 
principal  historian,  Luchaire,1  “the  king  lives  like  them 
from  the  income  from  his  farms  and  tolls,  the  payments 
of  his  peasants,  the  labor  of  his  serfs,  the  taxes  disguised 
as  gifts  which  he  levies  from  the  bishops  and  abbots  of 
the  neighborhood.  His  granaries  of  Gonesse,  Janville, 
Mantes,  Etampes,  furnish  his  grain;  his  cellars  of  Or- 
leans and  Argenteuil,  his  wine;  his  forests  of  Rouvrai 
(now  the  Bois  de  Boulogne),  Saint-Germain,  Fontaine- 
bleau, Iveline,  Compiegne,  his  game.  He  passes  his  time 
in  hunting,  for  amusement  or  to  supply  his  table,  and 
travels  constantly  from  estate  to  estate,  from  abbey  to 
abbey,  obliged  to  make  full  use  of  his  rights  of  enter- 
tainment and  to  move  frequently  from  place  to  place  in 
order  not  to  exhaust  the  resources  of  his  subjects.” 

In  other  words,  under  existing  methods  of  communica- 
tion, it  was  easier  to  transport  the  king  and  his  house- 
hold than  it  was  to  transport  food,  and  the  king  literally 
‘boarded  round’  from  farm  to  farm.  Such  conditions 
were  typical  of  the  age,  and  they  could  only  be  changed 
by  the  development  of  a revenue  in  money,  enabling  the 
king  to  buy  where  he  would  and  to  pay  whom  he  would 
for  service,  whether  personal  or  political  or  military. 
Only  by  hard  cash  could  the  mediaeval  ruler  become 

1 Luchaire,  Les  quatre  premiers  Capetiens , in  Lavisse,  Histoire  de  France 
(Paris,  1901),  11,  2,  p.  176. 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


7i 


independent  of  the  limitations  which  feudalism  placed 
upon  him.  Now,  while  the  Norman  duke  derived  much 
of  his  income  from  his  farms  and  forests,  his  mills  and 
fishing  rights  and  local  monopolies  and  tolls,  he  had  also 
a considerable  revenue  in  money.  Each  vicomtS  was 
farmed  for  a fixed  amount,  and  there  was  probably  a 
regular  method  of  collection  and  accounting.  If  the  king 
wished  to  bestow  revenue  upon  a monastery  he  would 
grant  so  many  measures  of  grain  at  the  mills  of  Bourges 
or  so  many  measures  of  wine  in  the  vineyards  of  Joui; 
while  in  a similar  position  the  Norman  duke  would  give 
money  — twelve  pounds  in  the  farm  of  Argentan,  sixty 
shillings  and  tenpence  in  the  toll  of  Exmes,  or  one  hun- 
dred shillings  in  the  prevote  of  Caen.  Nothing  could  show 
more  clearly  the  superiority  of  Normandy  in  fiscal  and 
hence  in  political  organization,  where  under  the  forms 
of  feudalism  we  can  already  discern  the  beginnings  of  the 
modern  state. 

To  William’s  authority  in  the  state  we  must  add  his 
control  over  the  Norman  church.  Profoundly  secularized 
and  almost  absorbed  into  the  lay  society  about  it  as  a 
result  of  the  Norse  invasion,  the  Norman  church  had 
been  renewed  and  refreshed  by  the  wave  of  monastic 
reform  which  swept  over  western  Europe  in  the  first 
half  of  the  eleventh  century,  and  now  occupied  both 
spiritually  and  intellectually  a position  of  honor  and  of 
strength.  But  it  was  not  supreme.  The  duke  appointed 
its  bishops  and  most  of  its  abbots,  sat  in  its  provincial 


72  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

councils,  and  revised  the  judgments  of  its  courts.  Liberal 
in  gifts  to  the  church  and  punctilious  in  his  religious 
observances,  William  left  no  doubt  who  was  master, 
and  his  respectful  but  independent  attitude  toward 
the  Papacy  already  foreshadowed  the  conflict  in  which 
he  forced  even  the  mighty  Hildebrand  to  yield. 

I have  dwelt  at  some  length  upon  these  matters  of 
internal  organization,  not  only  because  they  are  fun- 
damental to  an  understanding  of  many  institutions  of 
the  Norman  empire,  but  because  they  also  serve  to  ex- 
plain how  there  came  to  be  a Norman  empire.  The  con- 
quest of  England  has  been  so  uniformly  approached 
from  the  English  point  of  view  that  it  is  often  made  to 
appear  as  more  or  less  of  an  accident  arising  from  a 
casual  invasion  of  freebooters.  Viewed  in  its  proper  per- 
spective, which  I venture  to  think  is  the  Norman  per- 
spective, it  appears  as  a natural  outgrowth  of  Norman 
discipline  and  of  Norman  expansion.  Only  because  the 
duke  was  strong  at  home  could  he  hope  to  be  strong 
abroad,  only  because  he  was  master  of  an  extraordi- 
narily vigorous,  coherent,  and  well-organized  state  in 
Normandy  could  he  attempt  the  at  first  sight  impossible 
task  of  conquering  a kingdom  and  the  still  greater  task  of 
organizing  it  under  a firm  government.  We  must  take 
account,  not  only  of  the  weakness  of  England,  but  also 
of  the  strength  of  Normandy,  stronger  than  any  of  its 
continental  neighbors,  stronger  even  than  royalty  itself. 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  73 

That  the  expansion  of  Normandy  should  be  directed 
toward  England  was  the  result,  not  only  of  the  special 
conditions  of  the  year  1066,  but  of  a steady  rapproche- 
ment between  the  two  countries,  in  which  the  active  ef- 
fort was  exerted  from  the  Norman  side.  By  geographi- 
cal position,  by  the  Scandinavian  settlement  of  both 
countries,  and  by  the  commercial  enterprise  of  the  mer- 
chants of  Rouen,  the  history  of  Normandy  and  Eng- 
land had  in  various  ways  been  brought  together  in  the 
tenth  century,  till  in  1002  the  marriage  of  the  English 
king  Ethelred  with  Emma,  sister  of  Duke  Richard  the 
Good,  created  dynastic  connections  of  far-reaching  im- 
portance. Their  son  Edward  the  Confessor  was  brought 
up  at  the  Norman  court,  so  that  his  habits  and  sympa- 
thies became  Norman  rather  than  English,  and  his  ac- 
cession to  the  English  throne  in  1042  opened  the  way 
to  a rapid  development  of  Norman  influence  both  in 
church  and  in  state,  which  Freeman,  with  his  strong 
anti-foreign  feelings,  considered  the  real  beginning  of 
the  Norman  Conquest.  As  Edward’s  childless  reign 
drew  near  its  end,  there  were  two  principal  claimants 
for  the  succession,  Harold,  son  of  Godwin,  the  most 
powerful  earl  of  England,  and  Duke  William.  Harold 
could  make  no  hereditary  claim  to  the  throne,  nor  until 
the  eve  of  Edward’s  death  does  he  seem  to  have  had  the 
king’s  support,  but  he  was  a man  of  strength  and  force 
and  was  clearly  the  leading  man  of  the  kingdom.  Wil- 
liam, as  the  great-nephew  of  Ethelred  and  Emma,  was 


74  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

cousin  (first  cousin  once  removed)  of  Edward,  a claim 
which  he  strengthened  by  an  early  expression  of  Edward 
in  his  favor  and  by  an  oath  which  he  had  exacted  from 
Harold  to  support  his  candidacy.  The  exact  facts  are 
not  known  regarding  Harold’s  oath,  made  during  an 
involuntary  visit  to  Normandy  two  or  three  years  be- 
fore, but  it  enabled  William  to  pose  as  the  defender  of  a 
broken  obligation  and  gave  him  the  great  moral  ad- 
vantage of  the  support  of  Pope  Alexander  II,  to  whom 
he  had  the  question  submitted.  At  Edward’s  death 
Harold  had  himself  chosen  by  the  witan,  or  national 
council,  and  crowned,  so  that  he  had  on  his  side  what- 
ever could  come  from  such  legal  forms  and  from  the  sup- 
port which  lay  behind  them.  We  must  not,  however, 
commit  the  anachronism  of  thinking  that  he  was  a na- 
tional hero  or  even  the  candidate  of  a national  party. 
There  was  in  the  eleventh  century  no  such  thing  as  a 
nation  in  the  sense  that  the  term  is  understood  in  the 
modern  world,  and  the  word  could  least  of  all  be  ap- 
plied to  England,  broken,  divided,  and  harried  by  Dan- 
ish invasions  and  by  internal  disunion.  Even  the  notion 
of  the  foreigner  was  still  dim  and  inchoate,  and  the 
reign  of  Canute,  to  cite  no  others,  had  shown  England 
that  she  had  nothing  to  fear  from  a king  of  foreign 
birth.  The  contest  between  Harold,  who  was  half- 
Danish  in  blood,  and  William,  big  as  it  was  in  national 
consequences,  cannot  be  elevated  to  the  rank  of  a na- 
tional struggle. 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  75 

From  the  death  of  Edward  the  Confessor  and  the 
coronation  of  Harold,  in  January,  1066,  until  the  Cross- 
ing of  the  Channel  in  September,  William  was  busy  with 
preparations  for  the  invasion  of  England.  Such  an  ex- 
pedition transcended  the  obligation  of  military  service 
which  could  be  demanded  from  his  feudal  vassals,  and 
William  was  obliged  to  make  a strong  appeal  to  the  Nor- 
man love  of  adventure  and  feats  of  arms  and  to  promise 
wide  lands  and  rich  booty  from  his  future  conquests. 
He  also  found  it  necessary  to  enlist  knights  from  other 
parts  of  France  — Brittany,  Flanders,  Poitou,  even 
adventurers  from  distant  Spain  and  Sicily.  And  then 
there  was  the  question  of  transport,  for  Normandy  had 
no  fleet  and  it  was  no  small  matter  to  create  in  six 
months  the  seven  hundred  boats  which  William’s  kins- 
men and  vassals  obligated  themselves  to  provide.  All 
were  ready  by  the  end  of  August  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Dives,  — as  the  quaint  Hotel  Guillaume-le-Conqu6rant 
reminds  the  American  visitor,  — but  mediaeval  sailors 
could  not  tack  against  the  wind,  and  six  weeks  were 
passed  in  waiting  for  a favoring  breeze.  Finally  it  was 
decided  to  take  advantage  of  a west  wind  as  far  as  the 
mouth  of  the  Somme,  and  here  at  Saint-Valery  the 
fleet  assembled  for  the  final  crossing.  Late  in  Septem- 
ber the  Normans  landed  on  the  beach  at  Pevensey 
and  marched  to  Hastings,  where,  October  15,  they  met 
the  troops  of  Harold,  fresh  from  their  great  victory 
over  the  men  of  Norway  at  Stamfordbridge. 


76  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Few  battles  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  of  importance 
equal  to  that  of  Hastings,  and  few  are  better  known. 
Besides  the  prose  accounts  of  the  Latin  chroniclers, 
we  have  the  contemporary  elegiacs  of  Guy  of  Amiens 
and  Baudri  of  Bourgueil,  the  spirited  verse  of  the 
Roman  de  Ron  of  Master  Wace,  the  most  detailed 
narrative  but  written,  unfortunately,  a century  after 
the  event,  and  the  unique  and  vivid  portrayal  of  the 
Bayeux  Tapestry.  This  remarkable  monument,  which 
is  accessible  to  all  in  a variety  of  editions,  consists  of  a 
roll  of  cloth  two  hundred  and  thirty  feet  long  and 
twenty  inches  in  breadth,  embroidered  in  colors  with 
a series  of  seventy-nine  scenes  which  narrate  the  his- 
tory of  the  Conquest  from  the  departure  of  Harold  on 
the  ill-fated  journey  which  led  him  to  William’s  court 
down  to  the  final  discomfiture  of  the  English  army  on 
the  field  of  Hastings.  The  episodes,  which  are  desig- 
nated by  brief  titles,  are  well  chosen  and  are  executed 
with  a realism  of  detail  which  is  of  the  greatest  impor- 
tance for  the  life  and  culture  of  the  age.  Preserved  in 
the  cathedral  and  later  in  the  municipal  Museum  of 
Bayeux  — save  for  a notable  interval  in  1804,  when  Na- 
poleon had  it  exhibited  in  Paris  to  arouse  enthusiasm 
for  a new  French  conquest  of  England,  — the  tapestry 
appears  from  internal  evidence  to  have  been  originally 
executed  as  an  ornament  for  this  cathedral  by  English 
workmen  at  the  command  of  Bishop  Odo,  half-brother 
of  the  Conqueror.  There  is  no  basis  for  the  common  be- 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


77 


lief  that  it  was  the  work  of  Queen  Matilda  or  her  ladies, 
but  efforts  to  place  it  one  or  even  two  centuries  later 
have  proved  unavailing  against  the  evidence  of  armor 
and  costume,  and  the  general  opinion  of  scholars  now 
regards  it  as  belonging  to  the  eleventh  century  and  thus 
substantially  contemporary  with  the  events  which  it 
depicts. 

The  modern  literature  of  the  battle  is  also  commensur- 
ate with  its  importance.  The  classic  account  is  found  in 
the  third  volume  of  Freeman’s  majestic  History  of  the 
Norman  Conquest,  where  the  story  is  told  with  a rare 
combination  of  minute  detail  and  spirited  narrative 
which  reminds  us,  it  has  been  said,  of  a battle  of  the  Iliad 
or  a Norse  saga.  Splendid  as  this  narrative  is,  its  enthu- 
siasm often  carries  it  beyond  the  evidence  of  the  sources, 
and  in  several  fundamental  points  it  can  no  longer  be 
accepted  as  historically  sound.  The  theory  of  the  pali- 
sade upon  which  Freeman’s  conception  of  the  English 
tactics  rested  has  been  destroyed  by  the  trenchant  criti- 
cism of  that  profound  student  of  Anglo-Norman  history, 
J.  Horace  Round,  and  his  whole  treatment  has  been 
vigorously  attacked  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  scien- 
tific study  of  military  history  by  Wilhelm  Spatz  and  his 
distinguished  master,  Hans  Delbriick,  of  Berlin.  Un- 
fortunately the  Berlin  critics  are  influenced  too  much  by 
certain  theories  of  military  organization;  they  do  not 
call  the  English  soldier  of  the  period  a degenerate,  but 
they  consider  him,  and  the  Norman  knight  as  well,  in- 


78  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

capable  of  the  disciplined  and  united  action  required 
by  all  real  strategy,  incapable  even  of  forming  the 
shield-wall  and  executing  the  feigned  flight  described 
by  the  contemporary  chroniclers  of  the  battle.  While 
it  is  true  that  mediaeval  fighting  was  far  more  individual- 
istic than  that  of  ancient  or  modern  armies  and  lacked 
also  the  flexible  conditions  which  lie  at  the  basis  of 
modern  tactics,  there  is  the  best  of  contemporary  evi- 
dence for  a certain  amount  of  strategical  movement  at 
Hastings.  On  one  point,  however,  the  modern  mili- 
tary critics  have  compelled  us  to  modify  our  ideas  of 
the  battles  of  earlier  times,  namely,  with  respect  to  the 
numbers  engaged.  Against  the  constant  tendency  to 
magnify  the  size  of  the  military  forces,  a tendency  ac- 
centuated in  the  Middle  Ages  by  the  complete  reck- 
lessness of  chroniclers  when  dealing  with  large  figures, 
modern  criticism  has  pointed  out  the  limitations  of 
battle-space,  transportation,  and  commissariat.  The 
five  millions  with  which  Xerxes  is  said  to  have  invaded 
Greece  are  a physical  impossibility,  for  Delbriick  has 
shown  that,  with  this  number  moving  under  normal 
conditions,  the  rear-guard  could  not  have  crossed  the 
Tigris  when  the  first  Persians  reached  Thermopylae. 
Similarly  the  fifty  or  sixty  thousand  knights  attributed 
to  William  the  Conqueror  shrink  to  one-tenth  the  num- 
ber when  brought  to  face  with  the  official  lists  of  Eng- 
lish and  Norman  knights’  fees.  If  William’s  army  did 
not  exceed  five  or  six  thousand,  that  of  Harold  could 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


79 


not  have  been  much  greater  and  may  well  have  been 
less;  though  William’s  panegyrist  places  the  number  of 
English  at  1, 200,000,  not  more  than  12,000  could  have 
stood,  in  the  closest  formation,  on  the  hill  which  they 
occupied  at  Hastings.  Small  skirmishes  these,  to  those 
who  have  followed  the  battles  of  the  Marne,  the  Aisne, 
the  Vistula,  and  the  San,  yet  none  the  less  important 
in  the  world’s  history! 

In  spite  of  all  the  controversy,  the  main  lines  of  the 
battle  seem  fairly  clear.  The  troops  of  Harold  occupied 
a well-defended  hill  eight  miles  inland  from  Hastings  on 
the  London  road,  the  professional  guard  of  housecarles 
in  front,  protected  by  the  solid  wall  of  their  shields  and 
supported  by  the  thegns  and  other  fully  armed  troops, 
the  levies  of  the  countryside  behind  or  at  the  sides, 
armed  with  javelins,  stone  clubs,  and  farmers’  weapons. 
They  had  few  archers  and  no  cavalry,  but  the  steep  hill 
was  well  protected  from  the  assaults  of  the  Norman  horse 
and  favored  the  firm  defence  which  the  English  tactics 
dictated.  The  Norman  lines  consisted  first  of  archers, 
then  of  heavy-armed  foot-soldiers,  and  finally  of  the 
mailed  horsemen,  their  centre  grouped  about  William 
and  the  standard  which  he  had  received  from  the  Pope. 
After  a preliminary  attack  by  the  archers  and  foot,  the 
knights  came  forward,  preceded  by  the  minstrel  Taille- 
fer,  “a  jongleur  whom  a very  brave  heart  ennobled,” 
qui  mult  bien  chantout,  throwing  his  sword  in  the  air 
and  catching  it  as  he  sang  — 


8o  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


De  Karlemaigne  e de  Rollant  Of  Roland  and  of  Charlemagne, 

E d’Oliver  e des  vassals  Oliver  and  the  vassals  all 

Qui  morurent  en  Rencevals.  Who  fell  in  fight  at  Roncevals. 

But  the  horses  recoiled  from  the  hill,  pursued  by  many 
of  the  English,  and  only  the  sight  of  William,  his  head 
bared  of  its  helmet  so  as  to  be  seen  by  his  men,  rallied 
the  knights  again.  The  mass  of  the  English  stood  firm 
behind  their  shield-wall  and  their  line  could  be  broken 
only  by  the  ruse  of  a feigned  flight,  from  which  the  Nor- 
mans turned  to  surround  and  cut  to  pieces  their  pur- 
suers. Even  then  the  housecarles  were  unmoved,  until 
the  arrows  of  the  high-shooting  Norman  bowmen  fin- 
ally opened  up  the  gaps  in  their  ranks  into  which  Wil- 
liam’s horsemen  pressed  against  the  battle-axes  of  the 
king’s  guard.  And  then,  as  darkness  began  to  fall,  Har- 
old was  mortally  wounded  by  an  arrow,  the  guard  was 
cut  to  pieces,  and  the  remnant  fled.  “Here  Harold  was 
killed  and  the  English  turned  to  flight”  is  the  final  head- 
ing in  the  Bayeux  Tapestry,  while  in  the  margin  the 
spoilers  strip  the  coats  of  mail  from  the  dead  and  drive 
off  the  horses  of  the  slain  knights. 

“A  single  battle  settled  the  fate  of  England.”  There 
was  still  grim  work  to  be  done  — the  humbling  of  Exe- 
ter, the  harrying  of  Northumberland,  the  subjection 
of  the  earls,  but  these  were  only  local  episodes.  There 
was  no  one  but  William  who  could  effectively  take 
Harold’s  place,  and  when  on  Christmas  Day  he  had 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND 


81 


been  crowned  at  London,  he  could  reduce  opposition  at 
his  leisure.  The  chronicle  of  these  later  years  belongs 
to  English  rather  than  to  Norman  history. 

The  results  of  the  Conquest,  too,  are  of  chief  signifi- 
cance for  the  conquered.  For  the  Normans  the  immedi- 
ate effect  was  a great  opportunity  for  expansion  in  every 
department  of  life.  There  was  work  for  the  warrior  in 
completing  the  subjugation  of  the  land,  for  the  organ- 
izer and  statesman  in  the  new  adjustments  of  central  and 
local  government,  for  the  prelate  in  bringing  his  new 
diocese  into  line  with  the  practice  of  the  church  on  the 
Continent,  for  the  monks  to  found  new  priories  and 
administer  the  new  lands  which  their  monasteries  now 
received  beyond  the  Channel.  The  Norman  townsman 
and  the  Norman  merchant  followed  hard  upon  the 
Norman  armies,  in  the  Norman  colony  in  London,  in 
the  traders  of  the  ports,  in  the  boroughs  of  the  western 
border.  In  part,  of  course,  the  change  was  simply  the 
replacing  of  one  set  of  persons  by  another,  putting  a 
Norman  archbishop  in  place  of  Stigand  at  Canterbury, 
spreading  over  the  map  the  Montgomeries  and  Percies, 
the  Mowbrays  and  the  Mortimers  and  scores  of  other 
household  names  of  English  history;  but  it  was  also  a 
work  of  readjustment  and  reorganization  which  required 
all  the  Norman  gift  for  constructive  work.  A certain 
elan  passes  through  Norman  life  and  reflects  itself  in 
Norman  literature,  as  the  Normans  become  more  con- 
scious of  the  glory  of  their  achievements  and  the  great- 


82  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


ness  of  their  new  empire.  England  had  become  an  ap- 
pendage to  Normandy,  and  men  did  not  yet  see  that 
the  relation  would  soon  be  reversed. 

For  England,  the  Norman  Conquest  determined  per- 
manently the  orientation  of  English  politics  and  Eng- 
lish culture.  Geographically  belonging,  with  the  Scandi- 
navian countries,  to  the  outlying  lands  of  Europe,  the 
British  Isles  had  been  in  serious  danger  of  sharing  their 
remoteness  from  the  general  movements  of  European 
life  and  drifting  into  the  back  waters  of  history.  The 
union  with  Normandy  turned  England  southward  and 
brought  it  at  once  into  the  full  current  of  European 
affairs  — political  entanglements,  ecclesiastical  connec- 
tions, cultural  influences.  England  became  a part  of 
France  and  thus  entered  fully  into  the  life  of  the 
world  to  which  France  belonged.  It  received  the  speech 
of  France,  the  literature  of  France,  and  the  art  of 
France;  its  law  became  in  large  measure  Frankish,  its 
institutions  more  completely  feudal.  Yet  the  connec- 
tion with  France  ran  through  Normandy,  and  the 
French  influence  took  on  Norman  forms.  Most  of  all  was 
this  true  in  the  field  in  which  the  Norman  excelled,  that 
of  government:  English  feudalism  was  Norman  feu- 
dalism, in  which  the  barons  were  weak  and  the  central 
power  strong,  and  it  was  the  heavy  hand  of  Norman 
kingship  that  turned  the  loose  and  disintegrating  An- 
glo-Saxon state  into  the  English  nation.  England  was 
Europeanized  only  at  the  price  of  being  Normanized. 


NORMANDY  AND  ENGLAND  83 

From  the  point  of  view  both  of  immediate  achieve- 
ment and  of  ultimate  results,  the  conquest  of  England 
was  the  crowning  act  of  Norman  history.  Something 
doubtless  was  due  to  good  fortune,  — to  the  absence  of  an 
English  fleet,  to  the  favorable  opportunity  in  French 
politics,  to  the  mistakes  of  the  English.  But  the  funda- 
mental facts,  without  which  these  would  have  meant 
nothing,  were  the  strength  and  discipline  of  Normandy 
and  the  personality  of  her  leader.  Diplomat,  warrior, 
leader  of  men,  William  was  preeminently  a statesman, 
and  it  was  his  organizing  genius  which  “ turned  the  de- 
feat of  English  arms  into  the  making  of  the  English  na- 
tion.” This  talent  for  political  organization  was,  how- 
ever, no  isolated  endowment  of  the  Norman  duke,  but 
was  shared  in  large  measure  by  the  Norman  barons,  as  is 
abundantly  shown  by  the  history  of  Norman  rule  in 
Italy  and  Sicily.  For  William  and  for  his  followers  the 
conquest  of  England  only  gave  a wider  field  for  qualities 
of  state-building  which  had  already  shown  themselves 
in  Normandy. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

A detailed  narrative  of  the  relations  between  Normandy  and  Eng- 
land in  the  eleventh  century  is  given  by  E.  A.  Freeman  in  his  History 
of  the  Norman  Conquest  (Oxford,  1870-79),  but  large  portions  of  this 
work  need  to  be  rewritten  in  the  light  of  later  studies,  especially  those 
of  Round.  There  is  a brief  biography  of  William  the  Conqueror  by 
Freeman  in  the  series  of  “Twelve  English  Statesmen”  (London, 
1888),  and  a fuller  one  by  F.  M.  Stenton  in  the  “Heroes  of  the  Na- 
tions” (1908).  For  the  institutions  of  Normandy  see  my  articles  on 


84  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

“Knight  Service  in  Normandy  in  the  Eleventh  Century,”  in  English 
Historical  Review , xxn,  pp.  636-49;  “The  Norman  * Consuetudines 
et  Iusticie'  of  William  the  Conqueror,”  ibid,  xxm,  pp.  502-08;  and 
“Normandy  under  William  the  Conqueror,”  in  American  Historical 
Review , xiv,  pp.  453-76  (1909) ; also  L.  Valin,  Le  due  de  Normandie  et 
sa  cour , 91 2-1 204  (Paris,  1910).  For  church  and  state,  see  H.  Bohmer, 
Kirche  und  Staat  in  England  und  in  der  Normandie  (Leipzig,  1899). 
The  dealings  of  the  Norman  dukes  with  their  continental  neighbors 
are  narrated  by  A.  Fliche,  Le  rlgne  de  Philippe  I™  roi  de  France 
(Paris,  1912) ; L.  Halphen,Le  comte  d' Anjou  auXIe  siecle  (Paris,  1906) ; 
R.  Latouche,  Histoire  du  comte  du  Maine  pendant  le  Xe  et  le  XIe  siecle 
(Paris,  1910);  F.  Lot,  FidUes  ou  vassaux  (Paris,  1904),  ch.  6 (on  the 
feudal  relations  of  the  Norman  dukes  and  the  French  kings).  There 
is  a good  sketch  of  France  in  the  eleventh  century  by  Luchaire  in 
the  Histoire  de  France  of  Lavisse,  11,  part  2;  a fuller  work  on  this 
period  is  expected  from  Maurice  Prou.  For  the  literature  of  the  battle 
of  Hastings,  see  Gross,  Sources  and  Literature , nos.  707a,  2812,  2998- 
3000;  the  most  important  works  are  those  of  Round,  Spatz,  and  Del- 
briick,  Geschichte  der  Kriegskunst , ill,  pp.  147-62  (1907).  The  Bayeux 
Tapestry  is  most  conveniently  accessible  in  the  small  edition  of  F.  R. 
Fowke  (reprinted,  London,  1913);  see  also  Gross,  no.  2139,  and  Ph. 
Lauer,  in  Melanges  Charles  Bemont  (Paris,  1913),  pp.  43-58.  Freeman 
discusses  the  results  of  the  Conquest  in  his  fifth  volume;  see  also 
Gaston  Paris,  L} esprit  normand  en  Angleterret  in  La  poesie  du  moyen 
Age,  second  series  (Paris,  1895),  pp.  45-74. 


IV 

THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 

THE  lecture  upon  Normandy  and  England 
sought  to  place  in  their  Norman  perspective 
the  events  leading  to  the  Norman  Conquest  and 
to  show  how  that  decisive  triumph  of  Norman  strength 
and  daring  was  made  possible  by  the  development  of  an 
exceptional  ducal  authority  in  Normandy  and  Maine 
and  by  the  personal  greatness  of  William  the  Conqueror. 
We  now  come  to  follow  still  further  this  process  of  ex- 
pansion, to  the  Scotch  border,  to  Ireland,  to  the  Pyre- 
nees, until  the  empire  of  the  Plantagenet  kings  became 
the  chief  political  fact  in  western  Europe.  The  Norman 
empire  is  the  outstanding  feature  of  the  twelfth  century, 
as  the  conquest  of  England  was  of  the  eleventh. 

This  great  imperial  state  is  commonly  known,  not  as 
the  Norman,  but  as  the  Angevin,  empire,  because  its 
rulers,  Henry  II,  Richard,  and  John,  were  descended  in 
the  male  line  from  the  counts  of  Anjou.  The  phrase  is, 
however,  a misnomer,  since  it  leads  one  to  suppose  that 
the  Angevin  counts  were  its  creators,  which  is  in  no  sense 
the  case.  The  centre  of  the  empire  was  Normandy,  its 
founders  were  the  Norman  dukes.  The  marriage  of  the 
Princess  Matilda  to  Count  Geoffrey  Plantagenet  added 


86  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


Anjou  to  Normandy  rather  than  Normandy  to  Anjou, 
and  it  was  as  duke  of  Normandy  that  their  son  Henry 
II  began  his  political  career.  The  extension  of  his  do- 
mains southward  by  marriage  only  gave  Normandy 
the  central  position  in  his  realm,  and  it  was  the  loss 
of  Normandy  under  John  which  led  to  the  empire’s 
collapse. 

Against  the  application  of  the  term  ‘ empire  ’ to  the  do- 
minion of  Henry  II  more  cogent  reasons  may  be  urged. 
It  rests,  so  far  as  I know,  upon  no  contemporary  au- 
thority, and  even  if  the  phrase  could  be  found  by  some 
chance  in  a writer  of  the  twelfth  century,  it  would  carry 
with  it  no  weight.  Western  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages 
knew  but  one  empire,  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  the 
German  Nation  — from  one  point  of  view  neither  holy 
nor  Roman  nor  an  empire,  as  Voltaire  long  afterward 
remarked,  yet,  as  revived  by  Charlemagne  and  Otto  the 
Great,  representing  to  the  mind  of  the  Middle  Ages 
the  idea  of  universal  monarchy  which  they  had  inherited 
from  ancient  Rome.  To  the  men  of  the  twelfth  century 
the  emperor  was  Frederick  Barbarossa;  he  could  not  be 
Henry  II.  Nor  will  the  government  of  the  Norman- An- 
gevin ruler  square  with  the  modern  definition  of  an  em- 
pire as  “a  state  formed  by  the  rule  of  one  state  over 
other  states.”  1 His  various  dominions,  if  we  except 
Ireland,  were  not  dependencies  of  England,  or  Anjou, 
or  Normandy.  King  in  England,  duke  in  Normandy, 

1 W.  S.  Ferguson,  Greek  Imperialism , p.  i. 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  87 

count  in  Anjou  and  Maine,  duke  again  in  Aquitaine, 
Henry  ruled  each  of  his  dominions  as  its  feudal  lord  — 
very  much  as  if  the  German  Emperor  to-day  combined 
in  himself  the  titles  of  king  of  Prussia  and  of  Bavaria, 
grand  duke  of  Baden,  duke  of  Brunswick,  prince  of 
Waldeck,  and  so  on  throughout  the  members  of  the 
German  confederation.  Such  a government  is  not  an 
empire  in  the  sense  of  the  ancient  Roman  or  the  modern 
British  empires,  for  it  has  no  dependencies.  It  is  an 
empire  only  in  the  broader  and  looser  sense  of  the  word, 
a great  composite  state,  larger  than  a mere  kingdom  and 
imperial  in  extent  if  not  in  organization. 

That  Henry’s  realm  was  in  extent  imperial  can  easily 
be  seen  from  the  map.  It  extended  from  Scotland  to  the 
frontier  of  Spain,  as  the  empire  of  his  contemporary 
Frederick  I extended  from  the  Baltic  and  the  North  Sea 
to  central  Italy.  And  if  the  kingdoms  of  Germany, 
Italy,  and  Burgundy  which  made  up  Frederick’s  empire 
covered  in  the  aggregate  more  territory,  the  actual  au- 
thority of  the  ruler,  whether  in  army,  justice,  or  finance, 
was  decidedly  less  than  in  the  Anglo-Norman  state. 
Henry  had  a stronger  army,  a larger  revenue,  a more 
centralized  government.  Moreover,  the  Norman  empire 
was  less  artificial  than  it  seems  to  us  at  first  sight,  accus- 
tomed as  we  are  to  the  associations  of  the  modern  map. 
There  was,  especially  with  mediaeval  methods  of  com- 
munication, nothing  anomalous  in  a state  which  strad- 
dled the  English  Channel : Normandy  was  nearer  Eng- 


88  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


land  than  was  Ireland ; it  was  quite  as  easy  to  go  from 
London  to  Rouen  as  from  London  to  York.  The  geo- 
graphical bonds  were  also  strong  between  Henry’s  con- 
tinental dominions,  for  the  roads  of  the  twelfth  century 
did  not  radiate  from  Paris,  but  followed  mainly  the  old 
Roman  lines,  and  from  Rouen  there  was  direct  and 
easy  connection  with  LeMans,  Tours,  Poitiers,  and  Bor- 
deaux. In  the  matter  of  race,  too,  we  must  beware  of 
being  misled  by  our  modern  ideas.  The  English  nation 
was  at  most  only  the  vaguest  sort  of  a conception,  the 
French  nation  did  not  exist  till  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
personal  loyalty  to  the  lord  of  many  different  lands  was 
a natural  expression  of  the  conditions  of  the  age.  It  is 
contrary  to  our  prejudices  that  a single  state  should  be 
formed  out  of  the  hard-headed  Norman,  the  Celtic  fish- 
erman of  the  Breton  coast,  — the  ‘ Pecheur  d’Islande’ 
of  a later  day,  — the  Angevin,  Tourangeau,  Poitevin, 
the  troubadour  of  Aquitaine,  and  the  Gascon  of  the  far 
south,  with  his  alien  blood  and  non-Aryan  language,  al- 
ready a well-marked  type  whose  swaggering  gasconades 
foreshadow  the  d’Artagnan  of  the  Three  Musketeers  and 
the  ‘ cadets  de  Gascogne  ’ of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  But  it 
was  little  harder  to  rule  these  diverse  lands  from  London 
or  Rouen  than  from  Paris;  it  was  for  the  time  being  as 
easy  to  make  them  part  of  a Norman  empire  as  of  a 
French  kingdom.  Over  the  various  languages  and  dia- 
lects ran  the  Latin  of  law  and  government  and  the  French 
of  the  court  and  of  affairs;  while  in  political  matters 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  89 

these  countries  were,  as  we  shall  see,  quite  capable  of 
united  action. 

Let  us  call  to  mind  how  the  empire  of  Henry  II  was 
formed.  At  the  death  of  the  Conqueror  in  1087  the 
lands  which  he  had  brought  together  and  ruled  with 
such  good  peace  were  divided  between  his  two  eldest 
sons,  Robert  receiving  Normandy  and  William  the  Red, 
England.  Save  for  William’s  regency  over  Normandy 
during  his  brother’s  absence  on  the  Crusade,  the  two 
countries  remained  separate  during  his  reign,  and  were 
united  once  more  only  in  1 106  when  William’s  successor, 
his  younger  brother  Henry  I,  after  defeating  and  depos- 
ing Robert  at  Tinchebrai,  ruled  as  duke  of  Normandy 
and  king  of  England.  This  was  the  inheritance  which, 
after  the  death  of  Prince  William  in  the  White  Ship, 
Henry  sought  to  hand  down  to  his  daughter  Matilda, 
but  which  passed  for  the  most  part  to  his  nephew 
Stephen  of  Blois.  Stephen,  however,  never  gained  a firm 
hold  in  England  and  soon  lost  Normandy  to  Matilda’s 
husband,  Count  Geoffrey  of  Anjou,  by  whom  it  was  con- 
quered and  ruled  in  the  name  of  his  son  Henry,  later 
Henry  II.  Crowned  duke  of  Normandy  in  1150,  Henry 
succeeded  his  father  as  count  of  Anjou  in  the  following 
year,  and  at  Stephen’s  death  in  1154  became  king  of 
England.  Meanwhile,  in  1152,  he  had  contracted  a 
marriage  of  the  greatest  political  importance  with 
Eleanor,  duchess  of  Aquitaine,  whose  union  with  the 
French  king  Louis  VII  had  just  been  annulled  by  the 


90  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Pope;  an  alliance  which  made  him  master  of  Poitou, 
Aquitaine,  and  Gascony  and  therewith  of  two-thirds 
of  France.  Apart  from  certain  adjustments  in  central 
France,  the  only  addition  to  these  territories  made  dur- 
ing Henry’s  reign  was  the  conquest  of  eastern  Ireland 
in  the  years  following  1169.  Into  these  Irish  campaigns 
and  their  consequences  for  the  whole  later  history  of  the 
island  we  cannot  attempt  to  go.  Let  me  only  point  out 
that  the  leading  spirits  were  Norman,  except  so  far  as 
they  were  Irish  exiles,  and  that  the  names  which  now 
make  their  appearance  in  Irish  annals  are  Norman 
names  — the  Lacys  and  the  Clares,  the  Fitzgeralds  and 
the  de  Courcys,  as  Irish  before  long  as  the  Irish  them- 
selves. 

Substantially,  then,  the  empire  of  Henry  II  remained 
in  extent  as  he  found  it  at  his  accession  to  the  English 
throne  at  the  age  of  twenty-one;  it  was  not  created  by 
him  but  inherited  or  annexed  by  marriage.  Accordingly 
it  is  not  as  a conqueror  but  as  a ruler  that  he  can  lay 
claim  to  greatness.  But  although  Henry  attempted  little 
in  the  way  of  acquiring  new  territory,  he  did  much  to 
consolidate  his  possessions  and  to  extend  his  European 
power  and  influence.  His  daughters  were  married  to 
the  greatest  princes  of  their  time,  Henry  the  Lion,  duke 
of  Saxony  and  Bavaria,  King  Alphonso  VIII  of  Castile, 
King  William  II  of  Sicily.  He  made  an  alliance  with  the 
ruler  of  Provence  and  planned  a marriage  with  the  house 
of  Savoy  that  would  have  given  him  control  of  the  passes 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 


91 


into  Italy.  He  took  his  part  in  the  struggle  of  Pope  and 
anti- Pope,  of  Pope  and  Emperor;  he  corresponded  with 
the  emperor  of  Constantinople,  refused  the  crown  of  the 
kingdom  of  Jerusalem,  and  died  on  the  eve  of  his  de- 
parture on  a crusade.  No  one  could  lay  claim  to  greater 
influence  upon  the  international  affairs  of  his  time. 

Occupying  this  international  position,  Henry  must 
not  be  viewed,  as  he  generally  is,  merely  as  an  English 
king.  He  was  born  and  educated  on  the  Continent, 
began  to  reign  on  the  Continent,  and  spent  a large  part 
of  his  life  in  his  continental  dominions.  He  ruled  more 
territory  outside  of  England  than  in,  and  his  continental 
lands  had  at  least  as  large  a place  as  England  in  his 
policy.  It  is  perhaps  too  much  to  say,  in  modern  phrase, 
that  he  ‘thought  imperially,’  but  he  certainly  did  not 
think  nationally ; and  when  his  latest  biographer  speaks 
of  Henry’s  continental  campaigns  as  “foreign  affairs,” 1 
he  is  thinking  insularly,  for  Normandy,  Anjou,  Gascony 
even,  were  no  more  foreign  than  England  itself.  Henry 
is  not  a national  figure,  either  English  or  French;  he  is 
international,  if  not  cosmopolitan.  Only  from  the  point 
of  view  of  later  times  can  we  associate  him  peculiarly 
with  English  history,  when  after  the  collapse  of  the  Nor- 
man empire  under  his  sons,  the  permanent  influence  of 
his  work  continued  to  be  felt  most  fully  in  England. 

1 Salzmann,  Henry  II,  where  the  continental  aspects  of  Henry’s  reign 
are  dismissed  in  a brief  chapter  on  “foreign  affairs.”  The  heading  would 
be  more  appropriate  to  the  account  of  Henry’s  campaigns  in  Ireland. 


92  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Both  as  a man  and  as  a ruler,  the  figure  of  Henry  II 
has  come  down  to  us  distorted  by  the  loves  and  hates 
of  an  age  of  the  most  violent  and  bitter  controversy. 
Brilliant  though  scarcely  heroic  to  his  friends,  to  his 
enemies  he  was  a veritable  demon  of  tyranny  and 
crime,  whose  lurid  end  pointed  many  a moral  respecting 
the  sins  of  princes  and  the  vengeance  of  the  Most  High. 
Eminently  a strong  man,  he  was  not  regarded  as  in  any 
sense  superhuman,  but  rather  as  an  intensely  human 
figure,  tempted  in  all  points  like  as  other  men  and  yield- 
ing where  they  yielded.  Heavy,  bull-necked,  sensual, 
with  a square  jaw,  freckled  face,  reddish  hair,  and  fiery 
eyes  that  blazed  in  sudden  paroxysms  of  anger,  he  must, 
in  Bishop  Stubbs’s  phrase,  “have  looked  generally  like 
a rough,  passionate,  uneasy  man.” 1 The  dominant 
impression  is  one  of  exhaustless  energy  accompanied 
by  a physical  restlessness  which  kept  him  whispering 
and  scribbling  during  mass,  hunting  and  hawking  from 
morning  to  night,  and  riding  constantly  from  place  to 
place  throughout  his  vast  dominions  with  a rapidity 
that  always  took  his  enemies  by  surprise.  On  one  occa- 
sion he  covered  one  hundred  and  seventy  miles  in  two 
days.  Well-educated  for  a prince  of  his  time  and  able 
to  hold  his  own  in  ready  converse  with  the  clerks  of  his 
court,  his  tastes  were  neither  speculative  nor  romantic, 
but  were  early  turned  toward  practical  life.  He  was  pri- 
marily “ an  able,  plausible,  astute,  cautious,  unprincipled 
1 Benedict  of  Peterborough , 11,  p.  xxxiii. 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  93 

man  of  business,” 1 fond  of  work  and  delighting  in  detail, 
with  a distinct  gift  for  organization  and  a mastery  of 
diplomacy,  wise  in  the  selection  of  his  subordinates, 
skilful  in  evasion,  but  quick  and  sure  in  action.  Strong, 
clear-headed,  and  tenacious,  Henry  represents  the  type 
of  the  man  of  large  affairs,  and  in  another  age  might  have 
amassed  a large  private  fortune  as  a successful  business 
man.  In  the  twelfth  century  the  chief  opportunity  for 
talent  of  this  sort  was  in  public  life,  where  the  king’s 
household  was  also  the  government  of  the  state,  the 
strengthening  of  royal  authority  was  the  surest  means 
of  attaining  national  unity  and  security,  and  the  inter- 
est of  the  king  coincided  with  the  interest  of  the  state. 
To  the  present  day,  with  its  cry  for  business  men  in 
public  office,  this  seems  natural  enough;  but  we  must 
remember  that  feudalism  meant  exactly  the  opposite 
of  business  efficiency,  and  that  the  problem  of  creating 
an  effective  government  in  the  midst  of  a feudal  society 
turned  largely  on  the  maintenance  of  a businesslike 
administration  of  justice,  finance,  and  the  army.  By 
his  success  in  these  fields  Henry  went  a long  way 
toward  creating  a modern  state,  and  did,  as  a matter 
of  fact,  establish  the  most  highly  organized  and  effective 
government  of  its  time  in  western  Europe. 

Our  conceptions  of  the  nature  of  Henry  II’s  public 
work  have  been  in  certain  respects  modified  as  the  result 
of  modern  research.  It  has  become  clear,  in  the  first 
1 Benedict  of  Peterborough , 11,  p.  xxxi. 


94  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

place,  that  he  was  an  administrator  rather  than  a legis- 
lator, and  that  such  of  his  legislation  as  has  reached  us 
belongs  in  the  category  of  instructions  to  his  officers 
rather  than  in  that  of  general  enactments.  These  meas- 
ures lack  the  permanence  of  statutes ; they  are  supple- 
mented, modified,  withdrawn,  in  accordance  with  the 
will  of  a sovereign  whose  restless  temper  showed  itself 
in  a constant  series  of  legal  and  administrative  experi- 
ments. Many  of  his  changes  seem  to  have  been  effected 
through  oral  command  rather  than  written  instructions. 
In  the  second  place,  Henry’s  originality  has  been  some- 
what diminished  by  a more  careful  study  of  the  work  of 
his  predecessors,  notably  of  Henry  I,  in  whose  reign  it 
is  now  possible  to  trace  at  work  some  of  the  elements 
that  were  once  supposed  to  have  been  innovations  of 
his  grandson.  As  a whole,  however,  the  work  of 
Henry  II  stands  the  test  of  analysis  and  gives  him  an 
eminent  place  in  the  number  of  mediaeval  statesmen. 

Precocious  in  many  ways  as  was  the  political  organi- 
zation of  Henry’s  dominions,  it  was  conditioned  by  the 
circumstances  of  its  time,  and  we  must  be  careful  to 
conceive  it  in  terms  of  the  twelfth  century  and  not  of  the 
fifteenth  or  the  twentieth.  The  Norman  sovereign  had 
at  his  disposal  none  of  the  legal  or  bureaucratic  tradi- 
tions which  were  still  maintained  at  Constantinople  and 
were  not  without  their  influence  upon  the  Norman 
kingdom  of  Sicily.  Nor  was  the  time  ripe  for  the  creation 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  95 

out  of  hand  of  a strong  central  government  for  his  va- 
rious territories,  such  as  became  possible  in  the  Burgun- 
dian state  of  the  fifteenth  century  and  in  the  Austrian 
state  which  was  modelled  upon  it.  Henry  was  in  the 
midst  of  a feudal  society  and  had  to  make  the  best  of  it. 
He  had  to  reckon  with  the  particularistic  traditions  of 
his  several  dominions  as  well  as  with  the  feudal  oppo- 
sition to  strong  government,  and  western  Europe  was 
still  a long  way  from  the  economic  conditions  which  lie 
at  the  basis  of  modern  bureaucracies. 

When  we  speak  of  the  Anglo-Norman  or  the  Angevin 
empire,  we  must  accordingly  dismiss  from  our  minds 
at  the  outset  any  notion  of  a government  with  a capi- 
tal, a central  treasury  and  judicature,  and  a common 
assembly.  A fixed  central  treasury  existed  only  in  the 
most  advanced  of  the  individual  states,  and  it  was 
many  years  before  the  courts  established  themselves 
permanently  at  Westminster  and  Rouen.  Government 
was  still  something  personal,  centring  in  the  person  of 
the  sovereign,  and  the  ministers  of  the  state  were  still 
his  household  servants.  The  king  had  no  fixed  residence, 
and  as  he  moved  from  place  to  place,  his  household 
and  its  officers  moved  with  him.  Indeed  kings  were  just 
beginning  to  learn  that  it  was  safer  to  leave  their  treas- 
ure in  some  strong  castle  than  to  carry  it  about  in  their 
wanderings;  it  was  not  till  1194  that  the  capture  of  his 
baggage  train  by  Richard  the  Lion-Hearted  taught  the 
French  king  Philip  Augustus  to  leave  his  money  and  his 


96  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

title-deeds  at  Paris  when  he  went  on  a military  expedi- 
tion. We  must  not  be  surprised  to  find  that  the  principal 
common  element  in  Henry’s  empire  was  Henry  himself, 
supplemented  by  his  most  immediate  household  officers, 
and  that  many  of  these  officers,  such  as  the  seneschals 
and  the  justiciars,  were  limited  in  their  functions  to 
England  or  Normandy  or  Anjou,  and  usually  remained 
in  their  particular  country  to  look  after  affairs  in  the 
king’s  absence.  There  was,  however,  one  notable  excep- 
tion, the  chancellor,  or  royal  secretary.  Regularly  an 
ecclesiastic,  so  that  there  was  no  chance  of  his  turning 
the  office  into  an  hereditary  fief,  the  nature  of  the  chan- 
cellor’s duties  attached  him  continuously  to  the  person 
of  the  sovereign  and  made  him  the  natural  companion 
of  the  royal  journeys.  He  was  far,  however,  from  being 
a mere  private  secretary  or  amanuensis,  but  stood  at 
the  head  of  a regular  secretarial  bureau,  which  had  its 
clerks  and  chaplains  and  its  well-organized  system  of 
looking  after  the  king’s  business.  The  study  of  the  his- 
tory of  institutions  goes  to  show  that,  on  the  whole,  there 
is  no  better  test  of  the  strength  or  weakness  of  a me- 
diaeval government  than  its  chancery.  If  it  had  no  chan- 
cery, as  was  the  case  under  the  early  Norman  dukes, 
or  if  its  methods,  as  seen  in  its  formal  acts,  were  irregu- 
lar and  unbusinesslike,  as  under  Robert  Curthose,  there 
was  sure  to  be  a lack  of  organization  and  continuity  in 
its  general  conduct  of  affairs.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
chancery  was  well  organized,  its  rules  and  practices 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 


97 

regularly  observed,  its  documents  clear  and  sharp  and  to 
the  point,  this  meant  normally  that  an  efficient  govern- 
ment stood  behind  it. 

Now,  judged  by  the  most  exacting  standards,  the 
chancery  of  Henry  II  had  reached  a high  degree  of  per- 
fection. It  has  quite  recently  been  the  subject  of  an 
elaborate  study  by  the  most  eminent  medievalist  of 
our  time,  the  late  Leopold  Delisle,  who  cannot  restrain 
his  admiration  for  its  regularity,  its  accuracy  and  finish, 
and  the  extraordinary  range  and  rapidity  of  its  work. 
The  documents  issued  in  the  name  of  Henry  II  during 
his  long  reign  of  thirty- five  years,  says  Delisle,1  “both 
for  his  English  and  his  continental  possessions,  are  all 
drawn  up  on  the  same  plan  in  identical  formulae  and  ex- 
pressed with  irreproachable  precision  in  a simple,  clear, 
and  correct  style,  which  is  also  remarkably  uniform 
save  for  a small  number  of  pieces  which  show  the  hand 
of  others  than  the  royal  officers.”  If  the  judgment  of 
this  master  required  support,  I should  be  glad  to  confirm 
it  from  the  personal  examination  of  some  hundreds  of 
Henry’s  charters  and  writs.  Such  uniformity,  it  should 
be  observed,  is  evidence  not  only  of  the  extent  and  tech- 
nical attainments  of  the  chancery  but  of  substantially 
similar  administrative  conditions  throughout  the  vari- 
ous dominions  to  which  these  documents  are  addressed : 
officers,  functions,  legal  and  administrative  procedure 
are  everywhere  very  much  alike.  Moreover,  a study  of 
1 Recueil  des  actes  de  Henri  II,  Introduction,  p.  i;  cf.  p.  151. 


98  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

these  charters  reveals  another  fact  of  fundamental  im- 
portance. Even  more  significant  than  uniformity  of 
procedure  in  a chancery  is  the  type  of  document  issued, 
for  since  the  strength  of  government  lies  not  in  legisla- 
tion but  in  administration,  a sure  index  of  a state’s 
efficiency  will  be  found  in  the  extent  and  character  of 
its  administrative  correspondence.  This  test  places  the 
Norman  empire  far  in  advance  of  any  of  its  contempo- 
raries. Every  payment  from  the  treasury,  every  allow- 
ance of  an  account,  every  summons  to  the  army,  every 
executive  command  or  prohibition,  was  made  by  formal 
royal  writ — per  breve  regis,  as  we  read  page  after  page  in 
the  account  rolls.  Of  the  many  thousands  of  such  writs 
issued  in  Henry’s  reign,  exceedingly  few  have  come  down 
to  us,  but  no  one  can  read  these,  terse,  direct,  trained 
down  to  bone  and  muscle,  without  realizing  the  keen 
minds  and  the  clear-cut  administrative  methods  which 
they  represent.  Take  an  example: 1 

H.  Dei  gratia  rex  Anglorum  et  dux  Normannorum  et 
Aquitanorum  et  comes  Andegavorum  R.  thesaurario  et 
Willelmo  Malduit  et  Warino  filio  Giroldi  camerariis  suis 
salutem. 

Liberate  de  thesauro  meo  xxv  marcas  fratribus  Cartusie 
de  illis  L marcis  quas  do  eis  annuatim  per  cartam  meam. 

Teste  Willelmo  de  Sancte  Marie  Ecclesia.  Apud  West- 
moster. 

The  purpose  of  these  writs  might,  of  course,  vary  — 
seize  A of  this  land;  do  right  to  B for  that  tenement; 

1 Delisle,  p.  166,  from  Madox,  Exchequer y i,  p.  390. 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 


99 


secure  C in  his  possession;  bring  your  knights  to  such 
a place  at  such  a time;  summon  twelve  men  to  decide 
D’s  right;  — but  each  has  its  appropriate  form,  which 
is  always  crisp  and  exact.  All  speak  the  language  of 
a strong,  businesslike  administration  which  expected 
as  a matter  of  course  prompt  and  implicit  obedience 
throughout  its  broad  dominions. 

If  such  a system  be  given  enough  time,  it  will  inevit- 
ably exert  a strong  and  persistent  influence  in  favor  of 
centralization  and  uniformity,  and  it  would  be  inter- 
esting to  know  just  what  was  accomplished  in  these 
directions  during  the  half  century  of  the  Norman  em- 
pire’s existence.  The  parting  advice  which  Henry  had 
received  from  his  father  Geoffrey  was  to  avoid  the  trans- 
fer of  customs  and  institutions  from  one  part  of  his 
realm  to  another,  and  the  wisdom  of  the  warning  was 
obvious  under  feudal  conditions,  if  not  in  all  imperial 
governments.  But  there  is  a difference  between  the 
field  of  local  custom  and  the  institutions  of  adminis- 
tration, and  while  even  in  matters  of  feudal  law  there  is 
some  evidence  of  a generalization  of  certain  reforms  in 
the  rules  of  succession,  in  the  conduct  of  government  it 
was  impossible  to  keep  the  different  parts  of  the  empire 
in  water-tight  compartments  so  long  as  there  was  a com- 
mon administration  and  frequent  interchange  of  officials 
between  different  regions.  We  must  remember  that 
Henry  was  a constant  experimenter,  and  that  if  a thing 
worked  well  in  one  place  it  was  likely  to  be  tried  in  an- 


100  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

other.  Thus  the  Assize  of  Arms  and  the  ordinance  for 
the  crusading  tithe  were  first  promulgated  for  his  con- 
tinental dominions,  while  the  great  English  inquest  of 
knights’  fees  in  1166  preceded  by  six  years  the  parallel 
Norman  measure.  The  great  struggle  with  Becket  over 
the  church  courts  seems  to  have  had  a Norman  pro- 
logue. The  chronological  order  in  any  given  case  might 
well  be  a matter  of  chance;  but  in  administrative  mat- 
ters the  influence  is  likely  to  have  travelled  from  the 
older  and  better  organized  to  the  newer  and  more 
loosely  knit  dominions,  from  England,  Normandy,  and 
Anjou  on  the  one  hand  to  Poitou,  Aquitaine,  and  Gas- 
cony on  the  other. 

Of  Henry’s  hereditary  territories,  Anjou  seems  the 
least  important  from  the  point  of  view  of  constitutional 
influence.  Much  smaller  in  area  than  either  Normandy 
or  England,  it  was  a compact  and  comparatively  cen- 
tralized state  long  before  Henry’s  accession,  but  the  op- 
portunity for  immediate  action  on  the  count’s  part  sim- 
plified its  government  to  a point  where  its  experience 
was  of  no  great  value  under  Anglo-Norman  conditions. 
Certainly  no  Angevin  influence  is  traceable  in  the  field 
of  finance,  and  none  seems  probable  in  the  administration 
of  justice.  In  the  case  of  Normandy  and  England  the 
resemblance  of  institutions  is  closest,  and  a host  of  inter- 
esting problems  present  themselves  which  carry  us  back 
to  the  effects  of  the  Norman  Conquest  and  even  further. 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 


IOI 


It  is,  of  course,  one  of  the  fundamental  problems  of 
English  history  how  far  the  government  of  England 
was  Normanized  in  the  century  following  the  Conquest. 
To  a French  scholar  like  Boutmy  everything  begins 
anew  in  1066,  when  "the  line  which  the  whole  history 
of  political  institutions  has  subsequently  followed  was 
traced  and  defined.”  1 To  Freeman,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  changes  then  introduced  were  temporary  and  not 
fundamental.  He  is  never  tired  of  repeating  that  the  old 
English  are  the  real  English;  progress  comes  by  going 
back  to  the  principles  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  and 
casting  aside  innovations  which  have  crept  in  in  modern 
and  evil  times;  "we  have  advanced  by  falling  back  on  a 
more  ancient  state  of  things,  we  have  reformed  by  calling 
to  life  again  the  institutions  of  earlier  and  ruder  times, 
by  setting  ourselves  free  from  the  slavish  subtleties  of 
Norman  lawyers,  by  casting  aside  as  an  accursed  thing 
the  innovations  of  Tudor  tyranny  and  Stewart  usurpa- 
tion.” 2 The  trend  of  present  scholarly  opinion  lies  be- 
tween these  extremes.  It  refuses  to  throw  away  the 
Anglo-Saxon  period,  whose  institutions  we  are  just  be- 
ginning to  read  aright ; but  it  rejects  its  idealization  at 
Freeman’s  hands,  who,  it  has  been  said,  saw  all  things 
"through  a mist  of  moots  and  witans”  and  not  as  they 
really  were,  and  it  finds  more  truth  in  Carlyle’s  remark 
that  the  pot-bellied  equanimity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 

1 The  English  Constitution , p.  3. 

2 Origin  of  the  English  Constitution  (London,  1872),  p.  20/. 


102  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


needed  the  drilling  and  discipline  of  a century  of  Nor- 
man tyranny.1 

Whether  he  was  needed  much  or  little,  the  Norman 
drill-master  came  and  did  his  work,  and  when  he  had 
finished  the  two  countries  were  in  many  respects  alike. 
He  left  his  mark  on  the  English  language  and  on  Eng- 
lish literature,  which  were  submerged  for  three  centuries 
under  the  French  of  the  court,  the  castle,  and  the  town, 
and  in  the  process  were  permanently  modified  into  a 
mixed  speech.  He  left  his  mark  on  architecture  in  the 
great  cathedrals  of  the  Norman  bishops  and  the  massive 
castles  with  their  Norman  keeps.  He  made  England  a 
feudal  society,  however  far  it  may  have  gone  in  that  di- 
rection before,  and  its  law,  from  that  day  to  this,  a feu- 
dal law.  And  he  remade  the  central  government  under 
the  strong  hand  of  a masterful  dynasty  which  compelled 
its  subjects  to  will  what  the  king  willed.  Whatever  per- 
manence we  may  assign  to  Anglo-Saxon  local  institu- 
tions, — and  we  cannot  help  granting  them  this  in  con- 
siderable measure,  — it  is  not  now  held  that  there  was 
any  notable  Anglo-Saxon  influence  upon  the  central  ad- 
ministration. At  best  England  before  the  Conquest  was 
a loose  aggregation  of  tribal  commonwealths  divided  by 
local  feeling  and  by  the  jealousies  of  the  great  earls,  and 
its  kingship  did  not  grow  stronger  with  process  of  time. 
The  national  assembly  of  wise  men,  whose  persistence 
Freeman  labored  in  vain  to  prove,  became  the  feudal 

1 Stubbs,  Benedict  of  Peterborough,  n,  p.  xxxv. 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  103 

council  of  the  Norman  barons,  and  this  council,  the 
curia  regis,  and  the  royal  household  which  was  its  per- 
manent nucleus,  became  the  starting-point  of  a new 
constitutional  development  which  produced  the  House 
of  Lords,  the  courts  of  law,  and  the  great  departments 
of  the  central  administration. 

Yet  in  a vigorous  state  central  and  local  are  never 
wholly  separable,  and  it  is  where  they  touch  that  re- 
cent study  has  been  able  to  show  some  continuity  of 
development  between  the  two  periods,  namely  in  the 
fiscal  system  which  culminated  in  the  exchequer  of 
the  English  kings.  Of  all  the  institutions  of  the  Anglo- 
Norman  state,  none  is  more  important  and  none  more 
characteristic  than  the  exchequer,  illustrating  as  it  does 
at  the  same  time  the  comparative  wealth  of  the  sover- 
eigns and  the  efficient  conduct  of  their  government.  No- 
where in  western  Europe  did  a king  receive  so  large  a 
revenue  as  here;  nowhere  was  it  collected  and  adminis- 
tered in  so  regular  and  businesslike  a fashion;  nowhere 
do  the  accounts  afford  so  complete  a view  of  “ the  whole 
framework  of  society.”  The  main  features  of  this  sys- 
tem are  simple  and  striking. 

In  every  administrative  district  of  Normandy  and 
England  the  king  had  an  agent  — in  England  the  sheriff, 
in  Normandy  the  vicomte  or  bailli — to  collect  his  rev- 
enues, which  consisted  chiefly  of  the  income  from  lands 
and  forests,  the  fees  and  fines  in  the  royal  courts,  the 


104  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

proceeds  of  the  various  feudal  incidents,  and  the  va- 
rious payments  which  there  were  from  time  to  time 
levied  under  the  name  of  Danegeld,  scutage,  aid,  or  gift. 
Twice  a year,  at  Easter  and  Michaelmas,  these  agents 
were  required  to  come  to  the  treasury  and  render  their 
accounts  to  the  king’s  officers.  At  Easter  the  sheriff  was 
expected  to  pay  in  half  of  his  receipts,  receiving  there- 
for down  to  1826  a receipt  in  the  form  of  a notched  stick 
or  tally,  split  down  the  middle  so  that  there  was  exact 
agreement  between  the  portion  retained  at  the  exchequer 
and  the  portion  carried  off  by  the  sheriff  to  be  produced 
when  the  acounts  of  the  year  were  settled  at  Michael- 
mas. The  great  session  of  the  exchequer  at  Michaelmas 
was  a very  important  occasion  and  is  described  for  us 
in  detail  in  a most  interesting  contemporary  treatise, 
the  Dialogue  on  the  Exchequer,  written  by  Richard  the 
King’s  Treasurer,  in  1178-79.  There  the  sheriff  met 
the  great  officials  of  the  king’s  household  who  were 
also  the  great  officers  of  the  Anglo-Norman  state  — the 
justiciar,  chancellor,  constable,  treasurer,  chamberlains, 
and  marshal,  reenforced  by  clerks,  tally-cutters,  calcu- 
lators, and  other  assistants.  The  place  and  the  institu- 
tion took  their  names  from  a chequered  table  or  chess- 
board — the  Latin  name  scaccarium  means  a chess-board 
— in  size  and  shape  not  unlike  a billiard  table,  covered 
with  cloth  which  was  ruled  off  into  columns  for  pence, 
shillings,  pounds,  hundreds  and  thousands  of  pounds.  On 
one  side  were  set  forth  in  this  graphic  manner  the  sums 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  105 

which  the  sheriff  was  required  to  pay,  on  the  other  he 
and  his  clerk  tried  to  offset  these  with  tallies,  receipts, 
warrants,  and  counters  representing  actual  cash.  Played 
with  skill  and  care  on  each  side,  for  the  stakes  were  high, 
this  great  match  was  likened  to  a game  of  chess  between 
the  sheriff  and  the  king’s  officers.  Its  results  were  recorded 
each  year,  district  by  district  and  item  by  item,  on  a 
great  roll,  called  the  pipe  roll  from  the  pipes,  or  skins  of 
parchment  sewed  end  to  end,  of  which  it  was  made  up. 
For  England  we  have  an  unbroken  series  of  these  rolls 
from  the  second  year  of  Henry  II,  as  well  as  an  odd  roll 
of  Henry  I,  constituting  a record  of  finance  and  govern- 
ment quite  unique  in  contemporary  Europe.  The  series 
was  doubtless  as  complete  for  Normandy,  but  there  sur- 
vive from  Henry’s  reign  only  the  roll  of  1180  and  frag- 
ments of  that  of  1184.  For  the  other  Plantagenet  lands 
nothing  remains. 

This  remarkable  fiscal  system  comprised  accordingly 
a regular  method  of  collecting  revenue,  a central  treas- 
ury and  board  of  account,  and  a distinctive  and  care- 
ful mode  of  auditing  the  accounts.  There  was  nothing 
like  it  north  of  Sicily,  and  contemporaries  admired  it 
both  for  its  administrative  efficiency  and  for  the  wealth 
and  resources  which  it  implied.  Although  something 
of  the  sort  seems  to  have  existed  in  all  the  territories  of 
the  Plantagenet  empire  and  the  different  bodies  seem 
to  have  maintained  a certain  amount  of  cooperation, 
all  our  records  come  from  England  and  Normandy, 


io6  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


and  there  can  be  no  question  that  it  is  distinctively 
an  Anglo-Norman  institution.  Whether,  however,  it  is 
English  or  Norman  in  origin  and  how  it  came  into  ex- 
istence, are  still  in  many  respects  obscure  questions.  The 
exchequer  is  not  an  innovation  of  Henry  II,  for  the 
surviving  roll  of  Henry  I and  certain  incidental  evi- 
dence show  that  it  existed  on  both  sides  of  the  Channel 
in  the  reign  of  his  grandfather.  In  the  time  of  the  author 
of  the  Dialogue  there  was  a tradition  that  it  had  been 
imported  from  Normandy  by  William  the  Conqueror, 
but  this  must  be  discounted  by  the  fact  that  certain 
elements  of  the  system  can  be  traced  in  Anglo-Saxon 
England.  The  truth  is  that  the  exchequer  is  a compli- 
cated institution,  some  parts  of  which  may  be  quite 
ancient  and  the  results  of  parallel  development  on  both 
sides  of  the  Channel;  at  least  the  problem  of  priority 
has  reached  no  certain  solution.  Its  most  characteristic 
feature,  however,  its  peculiar  method  of  reckoning,  does 
not  seem  either  of  Norman  or  English  origin,  but  derived 
from  the  abacus  of  the  ancient  Romans,  as  used  and 
taught  in  the  continental  schools  of  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries. 

One  who  tries  to  perform  with  Roman  numerals  a 
simple  problem  in  addition  or  subtraction  — or  better 
yet,  in  multiplication  or  division  — will  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  why  people  unacquainted  with 
the  Arabic  system  of  notation  have  had  recourse  to  a 
counting-machine  or  abacus.  The  difficulty,  of  course, 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 


107 


lies  not  so  much  in  the  clumsy  form  of  the  individual 
Roman  numbers  as  in  the  absence  of  the  zero  and  the 
reckoning  by  position  which  it  makes  possible.  This 
defect  the  abacus  supplied.  By  means  of  a sanded  board 
or  a cloth-covered  table  or  a string  of  counters  it  pro- 
vided a row  of  columns  each  of  which  represented  a 
decimal  group  — units,  tens,  hundreds,  etc.  — by  which 
numerical  operations  could  be  rapidly  and  accurately 
performed.  Employed  by  the  ancient  Romans,  as  by 
the  modern  Chinese,  the  arithmetic  of  the  abacus  be- 
came a regular  subject  of  instruction  in  the  schools  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  whence  its  reckoning  was  introduced 
into  the  operations  of  the  Anglo-Norman  treasury.  The 
most  recent  student  of  the  subject,  Reginald  Lane 
Poole,  connects  the  change  with  the  Englishmen  who 
studied  at  the  cathedral  school  of  Laon  early  in  the 
twelfth  century.  To  me  it  seems  somewhat  earlier, 
brought  by  abacists  who  came  to  England  in  the 
eleventh  century  from  the  schools  of  Lorraine.1  In 
either  case  its  introduction  was  much  more  than  a 
change  of  bookkeeping.  Convenient  as  such  reckoning 
was  in  general,  it  was  the  only  possible  method  for  men 
who  could  neither  read  nor  write,  like  the  Anglo-Nor- 
man sheriffs  and  many  of  the  royal  officers,  and  its  use 
made  it  possible  to  carry  on  the  fiscal  business  of  the 
state  on  a large  scale,  in  an  open  and  public  fashion, 

1 Poole,  The  Exchequer  in  the  Twelfth  Century , pp.  42-57;  Haskins, 
“The  Abacus  and  the  King’s  Curia,”  in  English  Historical  Review , xxvil, 
pp.  101-06. 


io8  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


with  full  justice  to  all  parties,  and  with  accuracy,  cer- 
tainty, and  dispatch.  It  was  a businesslike  system  for 
busy  and  businesslike  men. 

In  the  history  of  judicial  administration  the  personal 
initiative  of  Henry  II  is  more  evident  than  in  finance. 
The  king  had  an  especial  fondness  for  legal  questions 
and  often  participated  in  their  decision,  yet  his  influence 
was  exerted  particularly  to  develop  a system  of  courts 
and  judges  which  could  work  in  his  absence  and  with- 
out his  intervention.  Although  the  institution  is  found 
previously  both  in  England  and  Normandy,  it  is  in 
Henry’s  reign  that  the  system  of  itinerant  justices  is 
fully  organized  with  regular  circuits  and  a rapidly  ex- 
tending jurisdiction  which  broke  down  local  privileges 
and  exemptions  and  by  its  decisions  created  the  common 
law.  Hitherto  chiefly  a feudal  assembly  concerned  with 
the  causes  of  the  king  and  his  barons,  after  Henry’s 
time  the  king’s  court  is  a permanent  body  of  profes- 
sional judges  and  a tribunal  for  the  whole  realm.  It  is  no 
accident  that  his  reign  produced  in  the  treatise  of  Glan- 
vill  on  The  Laws  and  Customs  of  England  the  first  of  the 
great  series  of  textbooks  which  are  the  landmarks  of 
English  legal  development.  Henry’s  reign  is  also  an 
important  period  in  the  growth  of  Norman  law,  the 
earliest  formulation  of  which  reaches  us  ten  years  after 
his  death  in  the  Tres  Ancien  Coutumier  de  Normandie , 
and  the  reduction  of  local  custom  to  writing  is  a process 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 


109 


which  went  on  in  his  other  continental  possessions ; yet, 
as  in  finance,  England  and  Normandy  plainly  took  the 
lead  in  legal  literature  and  in  legal  development.  In- 
deed, the  distinction  between  justice  and  finance  is  less 
sharp  than  we  might  at  first  suppose,  for  the  growth  of 
jurisdiction  meant  increased  profit  from  fees  and  fines, 
and  heavy  payments  were  necessary  to  secure  the  inter- 
vention of  the  royal  judges.  In  this  sense  Henry  has 
often  been  called,  and  rightly,  a seller  of  justice,  but  his 
latest  biographer  has  pointed  out  that  “if  the  commod- 
ity was  expensive  it  was  at  least  the  best  of  its  kind,  and 
there  is  a profound  gulf  between  the  selling  of  justice 
and  of  injustice.  A bribe  might  be  required  to  set  the 
machine  of  the  law  in  motion,  but  it  would  be  unavailing 
to  divert  its  course  when  once  started.”  1 The  wheels  of 
government  are  turned  by  self-interest  as  well  as  by 
unselfish  statesmanship. 

Of  the  many  judicial  reforms  of  Henry’s  reign  none 
is  more  significant  than  the  measures  which  he  took  for 
extending  the  use  of  the  jury  as  a method  of  trial  in  the 
royal  courts,  and  none  illustrates  better  the  relation  of 
Norman  to  English  institutions.  Characteristic  as  the 
jury  is  in  the  history  of  English  government  and  of 
English  law,  as  at  once  the  palladium  of  personal  lib- 
erty and  the  basis  of  representative  institutions  in  Par- 
liament, it  is  a striking  fact  that  originally  it  was  “not 
popular  but  royal,”  not  English  but  Norman,  or  rather 


1 Salzmann,  Henry  II,  p.  176. 


no  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


Frankish  through  the  intermediary  of  Normandy.1 
Although  it  has  a history  which  can  be  traced  for  more 
than  a thousand  years,  the  jury  does  not  definitely  make 
its  appearance  in  England  until  after  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, and  the  decisive  steps  in  its  further  development 
were  taken  during  the  union  of  England  and  Normandy 
and  probably  as  a result  of  Norman  experience.  It  is 
now  the  general  opinion  of  scholars  that  the  modern 
jury  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  sworn  inquests  of  neighbors 
held  by  command  of  the  Norman  and  Angevin  kings, 
and  that  the  procedure  in  these  inquests  is  in  all  essen- 
tial respects  the  same  as  that  employed  by  the  Frankish 
rulers  three  centuries  before.  It  is  also  generally  agreed 
that  while  such  inquests  appear  in  England  immedi- 
ately after  the  Norman  Conquest, — the  returns  of  the 
Domesday  survey  are  a striking  example,  — their  em- 
ployment in  lawsuits  remains  exceptional  until  the 
time  of  Henry  II,  when  they  become  in  certain  cases  a 
matter  of  right  and  a part  of  the  settled  law  of  the  land. 
What  had  been  heretofore  a special  privilege  of  the 
king  and  of  those  to  whom  he  granted  it,  became  under 
Henry  a right  of  his  subjects  and  a part  of  the  regular 
system  of  justice.  Accomplished  doubtless  gradually, 
first  for  one  class  of  cases  and  then  for  another,  this  ex- 
tension of  the  king’s  prerogative  procedure  to  his  sub- 
jects seems  to  have  been  formulated  in  a definite  royal 
act  or  series  of  acts,  probably  by  royal  ordinances  or 
1 Pollock  and  Maitland,  History  of  English  Law,  I,  p.  14? 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE 


hi 


assizes,  whence  the  procedure  is  often  called  the  assize. 
In  England  the  earliest  of  these  assizes  known  to  us 
appears  in  1164  in  the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon, 
followed  shortly  by  applications  of  this  mode  of  trial  to 
other  kinds  of  cases.  In  Normandy  repeated  references 
to  similar  assizes  occur  some  years  earlier,  between  1156 
and  1159,  so  that  as  far  as  present  evidence  goes,  the 
priority  of  Normandy  in  this  respect  is  clear.  More- 
over, Normandy  offers  two  pieces  of  evidence  that  are 
still  earlier.  In  the  oldest  cartulary  of  Bayeux  cathe- 
dral, called  the  Black  Book  and  still  preserved  high  up 
in  one  of  its  ancient  towers,  are  two  writs  of  the  duke 
ordering  his  justices  to  have  determined  by  sworn  in- 
quest, in  accordance  with  the  duke’s  assize,  the  facts 
in  dispute  between  the  bishop  of  Bayeux  and  certain  of 
his  tenants.  The  ducal  initial  was  left  blank  when  these 
writs  were  copied  into  the  cartulary,  in  order  that  it 
might  later  be  inserted  in  colors  by  an  illuminator  who 
never  came;  and  those  who  first  studied  these  docu- 
ments drew  the  hasty  conclusion  that  they  were  issued 
by  Henry  as  duke  of  Normandy  before  he  became  king. 
It  was  not,  however,  usual  for  the  mediaeval  scribe  to 
leave  the  rubricator  entirely  without  guidance  when  he 
came  to  insert  his  initials,  but  to  mark  the  proper  letter 
lightly  in  the  place  itself  or  on  the  margin,  and  an  at- 
tentive examination  of  the  well-thumbed  margins  of 
the  Bayeux  Black  Book  shows  that  this  was  no  excep- 
tion to  the  rule,  and  that  in  both  the  cases  in  question 


1 12  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


the  initial  G had  been  carefully  indicated.  G can,  of 
course,  stand  only  for  Henry’s  father  Geoffrey,  so  that 
some  general  use  of  the  assize  as  a method  of  trial  in  the 
ducal  courts  can  be  proved  for  his  reign.  As  no  such 
documents  have  reached  us  for  his  predecessors,  it 
would  be  tempting  to  assume  the  influence  of  Angevin 
precedents;  but  this  runs  counter  to  what  we  know  of 
the  judicial  institutions  of  Anjou  in  this  period,  as  well 
as  of  the  policy  of  Geoffrey  in  Normandy,  which  was  to 
follow  in  all  respects  the  system  of  Henry  I.  Although 
the  first  general  use  of  the  sworn  inquest  as  a mode  of 
trial  thus  antedates  Henry  II,  it  is  still  a Norman  in- 
stitution. 

It  would  carry  us  too  far  to  discuss  the  many  prob- 
lems connected  with  the  use  of  the  jury  in  Henry’s 
reign  or  to  follow  the  many  changes  still  needed  to  con- 
vert the  sworn  inquest  into  the  modern  jury.  It  is  suffi- 
cient for  our  present  purpose  to  mark  its  Norman  char- 
acter, first  as  being  carried  to  England  by  the  Normans 
in  its  older  form,  and  then  as  being  developed  into  its 
newer  form  on  Norman  soil.  It  should,  however,  be 
remembered  that  its  later  history  belongs  to  England 
rather  than  to  Normandy.  With  the  rise  of  new  forms 
of  procedure  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  jury  on 
the  Continent  declines  and  finally  disappears;  “but  for 
the  conquest  of  England,”  says  Maitland,  “it  would 
have  perished  and  long  ago  have  become  a matter  for 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  113 

the  antiquary.”  1 In  England,  however,  it  was  early 
brought  into  relations  with  the  local  courts  of  the  hun- 
dred and  the  county,  where  it  struck  root  and  devel- 
oped into  a popular  method  of  trial  which  was  later  to 
become  a defence  against  the  king’s  officers  who  had 
first  introduced  it.  A bulwark  of  individual  liberty,  the 
jury  also  holds  an  important  place  in  the  establishment 
of  representative  government,  for  it  was  through  rep- 
resentative juries  that  the  voice  of  the  countryside  first 
asserted  itself  in  the  local  courts,  for  the  assessment  of 
taxes  as  well  as  for  the  decision  of  cases,  and  it  was  in 
the  negotiations  of  royal  officers  with  the  local  juries 
that  we  can  trace  the  beginnings  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. It  is  no  accident  that  the  first  employment  of 
local  juries  for  the  assessment  of  military  and  fiscal  ob- 
ligations belongs  to  the  later  years  of  Henry  II. 

It  may  seem  a far  cry  from  the  Frankish  inquests  of 
the  ninth  century  to  the  juries  and  the  representative 
assemblies  of  the  twentieth,  but  the  development  is 
continuous,  and  it  leads  through  Normandy.  In  this 
sense  the  English-speaking  countries  are  all  heirs  of  the 
early  Normans  and  of  the  Norman  kings  who,  all  un- 
consciously, provided  for  the  extension  and  the  per- 
petuation of  the  Norman  methods  of  trial.  At  such 
points  Norman  history  merges  in  that  of  England,  the 
British  Empire,  and  the  United  States. 

1 Pollock  and  Maitland,  I,  p.  141. 


1 14  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

The  chief  events  in  the  history  of  the  Norman  empire  are  treated 
in  the  general  works  of  Miss  K.  L.  Norgate,  England  under  the 
Angevin  Kings  (London,  1887) ; Sir  J.  H.  Ramsay,  The  Angevin  Empire 
(London,  1903);  G.  B.  Adams,  History  of  England  from  the  Norman 
Conquest  to  the  Death  of  John  (London,  1905) ; H.  W.  C.  Davis,  Eng- 
land under  the  Normans  and  Angevins  (London,  1905).  There  is  a brief 
biography  of  Henry  the  Second  by  Mrs.  J.  R.  Green  (London,  1888; 
reprinted,  1903);  and  a more  recent  one  by  L.  F.  Salzmann  (Boston, 
etc.,  1914).  A notable  characterization  of  Henry  and  his  work  is 
given  by  William  Stubbs,  in  the  introduction  to  his  edition  of  Benedict 
of  Peterborough , 11  (London,  1867),  reprinted  in  his  Historical  Intro- 
ductions (London,  1902),  pp.  89-172.  For  the  continental  aspects 
of  the  reign  see  F.  M.  Powicke,  The  Loss  of  Normandy  (Manchester, 
1913);  and  his  articles  in  the  English  Historical  Review , xxi,  xxil 
(1906-07).  Cf.  A.  Cartellieri,  Die  Machtstellung  Heinrichs  II.  von 
England , in  Neue  Heidelberger  Jahrbiicher , vm,  pp.  269-83  (1898); 
F.  Hardegen,  Imperialpolitik  Konig  Heinrichs  II.  von  England  (Heidel- 
berg, 1905).  The  fullest  account  of  Irish  affairs  is  G.  H.  Orpen,  Ireland 
under  the  Normans  (Oxford,  1911). 

The  best  general  accounts  of  constitutional  and  legal  matters  are 
those  of  Stubbs,  Constitutional  History  of  England , 1 (last  edition, 
Oxford,  1903),  corrected  by  various  special  studies  of  J.  H.  Round,  to 
be  found  chiefly  in  his  Feudal  England  (London,  1895;  reprinted, 
1909)  and  Commune  of  London  (Westminster,  1899);  and  by  Pollock 
and  Maitland,  History  of  English  Law  (second  edition,  London,  1898). 
The  results  of  recent  investigation  are  incorporated  in  the  studies  and 
notes  appended  to  the  French  translation  of  Stubbs  by  Petit-Du- 
taillis  (Paris,  1907) ; this  supplementary  material  is  translated  into 
English  by  W.  E.  Rhodes  (Manchester,  1911).  There  are  admirable 
studies  of  the  chancery  in  L.  Delisle  Recueil  des  actes  de  Henri  II  con - 
cernant  les  provinces  franqaises  et  les  affaires  de  France , introduction 
(Paris,  1909) ; and  of  the  exchequer  in  R.  L.  Poole,  The  Exchequer  in  the 
Twelfth  Century  (Oxford,  1912).  See  also  Hubert  Hall,  Court  Life  under 
the  Plantagenets  (London,  1890;  reprinted,  1902).  For  the  more  dis- 
tinctively Norman  side  of  the  government  see  Haskins,  “The  Govern- 


THE  NORMAN  EMPIRE  115 

ment  of  Normandy  under  Henry  II,”  in  American  Historical  Review , 
xx,  pp.  24-42,  277-91  (1914-15);  and  earlier  papers  on  “The  Early 
Norman  Jury,”  ibid.,  vm,  pp.  613-40  (1903);  “The  Administration 
of  Normandy  under  Henry  I,”  in  English  Historical  Review , xxiv, 
pp.  209-31  (1909);  “Normandy  under  Geoffrey  Plantagenet,”  ibid., 
xxvii,  pp.  417-44  (1912);  Delisle,  Des  revenus  publics  en  Normandie 
auX!Ie  siecle,  in  Bibliotheque  del'Ecoledes  Charles,  x-xm  (1848-52); 
Valin,  Le  due  de  Normandie  et  sa  cour , supplemented  by  R.  de  Fre- 
ville,  “fitude  sur  Torganisation  judiciaire  en  Normandie  aux  XIIe  et 
XIIIesiecles,”  in  Nouvelle  Revue  historique  de  droit,  1912,  pp.  681-736. 
The  best  general  account  of  Norman  law  is  still  that  of  H.  Brunner, 
Die  Entstehung  der  Schwurgerichte  (Berlin,  1872). 


V 

NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 

IN  July,  1189,  Henry  II  lay  dying  in  his  castle  at 
Chinon.  Abandoned  and  attacked  by  his  sons, 
driven  from  LeMans  and  Tours  by  Philip  of 
France  and  forced  to  a humiliating  peace,  sick  in 
body  and  broken  in  spirit,  the  aged  king  made  his  way 
to  the  old  stronghold  of  the  Angevin  counts  in  the  val- 
ley of  the  Vienne.  Cursing  the  faithless  Richard  as  he 
gave  him  the  enforced  kiss  of  peace  at  Colombieres,  he 
had  fixed  his  hopes  on  his  youngest  son  John  till  the 
schedule  was  brought  him  of  those  who  had  thrown  off 
their  allegiance.  “Sire,”  said  the  clerk  who  read  the 
document  to  the  fever-tossed  king,  “may  Christ  help 
me,  the  first  here  written  is  Count  John,  your  son.” 
“What,”  cried  the  king,  starting  up  from  his  bed, 
“John,  my  very  heart,  my  best  beloved,  for  whose  ad- 
vancement I have  brought  upon  me  all  this  misery? 
Now  let  all  things  go  as  they  will;  I care  no  more  for 
myself  nor  for  anything  in  this  world.”  Two  days  later 
he  died,  cursing  his  sons,  cursing  the  day  he  had  been 
born,  repeating  constantly,  “Shame  on  a conquered 
king.”  Deserted  by  all  save  his  illegitimate  son  Geof- 
frey, who  received  his  father’s  blessing  and  his  signet 
ring  marked  with  the  leopard  of  England,  Henry  was 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  117 

plundered  by  his  attendants  of  gold  and  furnishings 
and  apparel,  just  as  William  the  Conqueror  had  been 
despoiled  in  the  hour  of  his  death  at  Rouen,  till  some 
one  in  pity  threw  over  the  royal  corpse  the  short  cloak, 
or  ‘curt  mantle,’  by  which  men  called  him.  Two  days 
later  he  was  laid  away  quietly  in  the  nunnery  of  Fon- 
tevrault,  where  a later  age  was  to  rob  his  tomb  of  all 
save  the  noble  recumbent  figure  by  which  it  is  still 
marked.  Thus  passed  away  the  greatest  ruler  of  his 
age;  thus  began  the  collapse  of  the  Norman  empire. 

Strikingly  dramatic  both  in  its  public  and  private 
aspects,  the  end  of  Henry  II  offers  material  fit  for  a 
Greek  tragedy,  and  we  may,  if  we  choose,  imagine  an 
Aeschylus  or  a Sophocles  painting  the  rapidity  of  his 
rise,  the  hybris  of  his  splendor,  and  the  crushing  nemesis 
of  his  fall.  Even  the  Promethean  touch  is  not  lacking  in 
the  withdrawal  of  Henry’s  unconquered  soul  from  God, 
as  he  looked  back  in  flight  at  the  burning  city  of  Le 
Mans:  “My  God,  since  to  crown  my  confusion  and  in- 
crease my  disgrace,  thou  hast  taken  from  me  so  vilely 
the  town  which  on  earth  I have  loved  best,  where  I was 
born  and  bred,  and  where  my  father  lies  buried  and  the 
body  of  St.  Julian  too,  I will  have  my  revenge  on  thee 
also;  I will  of  a surety  withdraw  from  thee  that  thing 
that  thou  lovest  best  in  me.”  1 Henry’s  life  needs  no 
blasphemous  closing  in  order  to  furnish  inexhaustible 
1 Giraldus  Cambrensis  (Rolls  Series),  vm,  p.  283. 


Ii8  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


material  for  moralizing,  and  in  a period  like  the  Middle 
Ages,  given  over  as  none  other  to  moral  lessons,  it 
served  to  point  many  a tale  of  the  crimes  and  fate  of 
evil-doers.  That  vain  and  entertaining  Welshman, 
Gerald  de  Barri,  or  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  in  whom  a 
recent  writer  thinks  he  has  discovered  the  proto- 
journalist,1 found  in  Henry’s  career  the  basis  for  a con- 
siderable book  devoted  to  the  Instruction  of  Princes. 
But  whereas  the  ways  of  the  gods  are  dark  and  un- 
searchable to  the  Greek  tragedians,  they  have  no  mys- 
tery for  Gerald.  Henry’s  punishment  was  due  to  his 
violations  of  religion,  first  in  his  marriage  with  Eleanor, 
the  divorced  wife  of  his  feudal  lord  Louis  VII,  second  in 
his  quarrel  with  Archbishop  Becket  and  the  oppression 
of  the  church  which  followed,  and  third  and  worst  of 
all,  in  his  failure  to  take  part  in  a crusade.  The  hammer 
of  the  church,  Henry  was  born  for  destruction.  The 
modern  world  is  more  cautious  in  the  matter  of  ex- 
plaining the  inexplicable,  and  more  prone  to  seek  human 
causes  when  they  can  be  found,  yet  the  collapse  of  the 
Plantagenet  empire  is  not  the  hardest  of  the  historian’s 
problems.  Something  he  will  ascribe  to  larger  forces  of 
development,  something  he  can  hardly  fail  to  attribute 
to  the  character  of  Henry’s  sons  and  to  his  policy  in 
dealing  with  them. 

Henry  II  is  not  the  only  case  in  history  of  a king  who 
could  rule  every  house  but  his  own,  of  a father  who  was 
1 Salzmann,  Henry  II,  p.  214. 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  119 

shrewd  and  stern  in  his  dealings  with  the  world  but 
swayed  by  unrequited  affection  and  ill-timed  weakness 
in  dealing  with  his  children.  Knowing  other  men,  he 
did  not  know  his  sons,  and  his  grave  errors  in  dealing 
with  them  were  errors  of  public  policy,  since  they 
concerned  the  government  of  his  dominions  and  the 
succession  to  the  throne.  Even  those  who  had  no  sym- 
pathy for  Henry  had  little  to  say  to  excuse  the  charac- 
ter and  the  unfilial  conduct  of  his  sons.  “From  the 
Devil  we  come,  and  to  the  Devil  we  return,”  Richard 
was  reported  to  have  said;  and  none  cared  to  con- 
tradict him.  Of  the  four  lawful  sons  who  grew  to  ma- 
turity, the  eldest  was  Henry,  crowned  king  by  his 
father  in  1170,  and  hence  generally  known  as  the  Young 
King.  Handsome  and  agreeable,  prodigal  in  largesse,  a 
patron  of  knightly  sports  and  especially  of  the  tourna- 
ments which  were  then  coming  into  fashion,  the  Young 
King  enjoyed  great  popularity  in  his  lifetime  and  after 
his  early  death  was  mourned  as  a peer  of  Hector  and 
Achilles  and  enshrined  as  a hero  of  courtly  romance. 
Yet  for  all  this  there  was  no  substantial  foundation. 
He  was  faithless,  ungrateful,  utterly  selfish,  a thorn  in 
his  father’s  side  and  a constant  source  of  weakness  to 
the  empire.  Married  at  the  age  of  five  to  the  daughter 
of  Louis  VII,  he  became  the  instrument  of  the  French 
king  in  his  intrigues  against  Henry  II  and  the  rallying 
point  of  feudal  reaction  and  personal  jealousy.  King  in 
name  though  not  in  fact,  having  been  crowned  merely 


120  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


as  a means  of  securing  the  succession,  Prince  Henry 
craved  at  least  an  under-kingdom  of  his  own,  and  on 
two  occasions,  in  1173  and  again  in  1183,  led  serious 
and  widespread  revolts  against  his  father,  the  evil 
results  of  which  were  not  undone  by  his  death-bed  re- 
pentance in  the  midst  of  the  second  uprising.  In  this 
revolt  of  1183  he  had  with  him  his  younger  brother 
Geoffrey,  duke  of  Brittany,  ‘the  son  of  perdition,’ 
equally  false  and  treacherous,  without  even  the  re- 
deeming virtue  of  popularity.  Fortunately  Geoffrey 
also  died  before  his  father. 

The  death  of  the  Young  King  left  as  Henry’s  eldest 
heir  Richard,  known  to  the  modern  world  as  the  Lion- 
Hearted.  With  much  of  his  father’s  energy,  Richard 
seems  to  have  inherited  more  than  any  of  his  brothers 
the  tastes  and  temperament  of  his  mother,  Eleanor  of 
Aquitaine.  Adventurous  and  high-spirited,  fond  of 
pomp  and  splendor,  a lover  of  poetry  and  music,  be  it 
the  songs  of  Provencal  minstrels  or  the  solemn  chants  of 
the  church,  he  belonged  on  this  side  of  his  nature  to  the 
dukes  of  Aquitaine  and  the  country  of  the  troubadours. 
He  loved  war  and  danger,  in  which  he  showed  great 
personal  courage,  and  in  the  conduct  of  military  enter- 
prises gave  evidence  of  marked  ability  as  a strategist; 
but  his  gifts  as  a ruler  stopped  there.  The  glamour  of 
his  personal  exploits  and  the  romance  of  his  crusading 
adventures  might  dazzle  the  imagination  of  contempo- 
raries more  than  the  prosaic  achievements  of  his  father, 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


121 


and  his  gifts  to  religious  houses  might  even  predispose 
monastic  historians  in  his  favor,  but  for  all  this  splendor 
his  subjects  paid  the  bills.  In  spite  of  his  great  income, 
he  was  always  in  need  of  money  for  his  extravagances; 
and  for  his  fiscal  exactions  there  was  never  the  excuse  of 
large  measures  of  public  policy.  Indeed,  so  far  as  we  can 
see,  Richard  had  no  public  policy.  “ His  ambition,”  says 
Stubbs,  “was  that  of  a mere  warrior:  he  would  fight  for 
anything  whatever,  but  he  would  sell  everything  that 
was  worth  fighting  for.”  1 Self-willed  and  self-centred, 
he  followed  wherever  his  desires  led,  with  no  sense  of 
loyalty  to  his  obligations  or  of  responsibility  as  a ruler. 
Made  duke  of  Aquitaine  at  seventeen,  he  sought  to  ride 
down  every  obstacle  and  bring  immediate  order  and 
unity  into  a region  which  had  never  enjoyed  either  of 
these  benefits ; and  he  quickly  had  by  the  ears  the  land 
which  he  should  have  best  understood.  He  was  soon  in 
revolt  against  his  father  and  also  at  war  with  the  Young 
King ; for  his  own  purposes  he  later  went  over  to  the  king 
of  France,  and  jested  with  his  boon  companions  over  his 
father’s  discomfiture  and  downfall.  Even  as  king  at  the 
age  of  thirty-two,  Richard  remained  an  impetuous 
youth ; he  never  really  grew  up.  Haughty  and  overbear- 
ing, he  alienated  friends  and  allies;  inheriting  the  rule  of 
the  vast  Plantagenet  empire,  he  showed  no  realization  of 
imperial  duty  or  opportunity.  Thus  he  visited  England 
but  twice  in  the  course  of  his  reign  of  ten  years  and 
1 Constitutional  History,  i,  p.  551. 


122  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


valued  it  solely  as  a land  from  which  revenue  might  be 
wrung  by  his  ministers,  nor  did  his  continental  domin- 
ions derive  advantage  from  his  presence.  Impetuous 
and  short-sighted,  Richard  Yea-and-Nay  had  to  meet 
the  greatest  statesman  of  his  day  in  deadly  rivalry;  and 
though  panegyrists  placed  him  above  Alexander,  Charle- 
magne, and  King  Arthur,  he  went  down  ignominiously 
before  Philip  Augustus. 

Last  of  all  comes  the  youngest  son  John,  “my  heart, 
my  best  beloved.”  Never  did  father  lavish  his  affection 
on  a more  unworthy  child.  False  to  his  father,  false  to 
his  brother  Richard,  John  proved  false  to  all,  man  or 
woman,  who  ever  trusted  him.  He  had  none  of  the  dash 
and  courage  of  Richard,  none  of  his  large  and  splendid 
way,  and  none  of  his  popularity  and  gift  of  leadership. 
Men  saw  him  as  he  was,  no  Charlemagne  or  Arthur,  but 
petty,  mean,  and  cowardly,  small  even  in  his  blasphe- 
mies, swearing  by  the  feet  or  the  teeth  of  God,  when 
Henry  II  had  habitually  sworn  by  his  eyes,  and  William 
the  Conqueror  by  his  splendor — par  la  resplendor  Del 
Always  devious  in  his  ways,  John’s  cunning  sometimes 
got  him  the  reputation  for  cleverness,  and  John  Richard 
Green  went  so  far  as  to  call  him  “the  ablest  and  most 
ruthless  of  the  Angevins.”  But  his  ability,  particularly 
in  military  matters  not  inconsiderable,  was  of  the  kind 
which  wasted  itself  in  temporary  expedients  and  small 
successes;  it  was  incapable  of  continuous  policy  or  sus- 
tained efforts;  and  it  everywhere  ended  in  failure.  Ger- 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  123 

aid  the  Welshman,  the  friend  of  his  youth,  at  the  end 
can  only  pronounce  him  the  worst  of  history’s  tyrants. 
John’s  whole  career  offers  the  most  convincing  evidence 
of  the  futility  of  talent  when  divorced  from  character, 
by  which  is  here  meant,  not  so  much  private  virtue,  — 
for  John’s  private  vices  were  shared  with  others  of  his 
family  and  his  time,  — but  merely  common  honor, 
trustworthiness,  and  steadfastness.  Even  in  his  wicked- 
ness John  was  shifty  and  false,  and  his  loss  of  his  empire 
was  due,  not  to  any  single  blunder  or  series  of  blunders, 
but  to  the  supreme  sin  of  lack  of  character. 

It  is  thus  possible  to  see  how  largely  the  collapse  of 
the  Norman  empire  was  bound  up  with  the  family  history 
of  Henry  II  — the  foolish  indulgence  of  the  father,  the 
ambitions  and  intrigues  of  the  mother,  the  jealousies, 
treachery,  and  political  incapacity  of  the  sons.  A per- 
sonal creation,  the  Plantagenet  state  fell  in  large  meas- 
ure for  personal  reasons.  If  it  was  Henry’s  misfortune  to 
have  such  sons,  one  may  say  it  was  also  his  misfortune  to 
have  more  than  one  son  of  any  sort,  since  each  became 
the  nucleus  of  a separatist  movement  in  some  particular 
territory.  The  kings  of  France,  it  has  often  been  pointed 
out,  had  for  generations  the  great  advantage  of  having  a 
son  to  succeed,  but  only  a single  son.  The  crowning  of 
the  French  heir  in  his  father’s  lifetime  assured  an  undis- 
puted succession;  the  crowning  of  the  Young  King  left 
him  dissatisfied  and  stirred  up  the  rivalry  of  his  younger 
brothers. 


124  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

But  this  is  not  the  whole  of  the  story.  The  very 
strength  and  efficiency  of  Henry’s  government  were 
sure  to  produce  a reaction  in  favor  of  feudal  liberties  in 
which  his  sons  serve  simply  as  convenient  centres  of 
crystallization.  Only  time  could  unify  each  of  these 
dominions  internally,  while  far  more  time  was  required 
to  consolidate  them  into  a permanent  kingdom,  and 
these  processes  were  interrupted  when  they  had  barely 
begun.  Such  a solution  of  the  ultimate  problem  of  con- 
solidation was,  we  have  seen,  entirely  possible  and  even 
natural;  but  another  was  possible  and  also  natural, 
namely  the  union  of  these  territories  under  the  king  of 
France.  Geography,  as  well  as  history,  favored  the 
second  alternative. 

The  geographical  unity  of  France  is  one  of  the  most 
obvious  facts  on  the  map  of  Europe.  The  Alps  and  the 
Pyrenees,  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Atlantic,  are  its 
natural  frontiers;  only  on  the  northeast  are  the  lines 
blurred  by  nature  and  left  to  history  to  determine. 
Within  these  limits  there  are  of  course  many  clearly 
marked  subdivisions  — the  valleys  of  the  Rhone,  Ga- 
ronne, Loire,  and  Seine,  Gascony,  Brittany,  Normandy, 
Flanders,  and  the  rest  — which  formed  the  great  fiefs  of 
the  Middle  Ages  and  the  great  provinces  of  later  times. 
Sooner  or  later,  however,  as  population  increased,  as 
trade  and  commerce  developed,  and  as  the  means  of 
communication  were  strengthened,  these  divisions  were 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


125 

certain  to  draw  together  into  a single  great  state. 
Where  the  centre  of  the  new  state  would  lie  was  not  a 
matter  of  accident  but  was  largely  determined  by  the 
great  lines  of  communication,  and  especially  by  the  com- 
mercial axis  which  runs  from  the  Mediterranean  to 
Flanders  and  the  English  Channel.  On  this  line  are  sit- 
uated the  Roman  capital  of  the  Gauls,  Lyons,  and  the 
modern  capital,  Paris.  This  fact,  combined  with  the 
central  and  dominant  position  of  the  Paris  basin  in  rela- 
tion to  the  great  valleys  of  the  Seine,  the  Loire,  and  the 
Meuse,  established  the  region  about  Paris,  the  Ile-de- 
France  of  history,  as  the  natural  centre  of  this  future 
nation.  Such  a state  might  grow  from  without  toward 
its  centre,  as  the  modern  kingdom  of  Italy  closed  in  on 
Rome,  but  the  more  natural  process  was  from  the  centre 
outward,  as  England  grew  about  Wessex  or  Branden- 
burg about  the  region  near  Berlin.  In  the  great  contest 
between  Capetian  and  Plantagenet  the  Capetian  “held 
the  inner  lines.”  Shut  off  from  the  sea  on  the  side  of  the 
Loire  as  well  as  on  the  side  of  the  Seine,  he  was  in  a posi- 
tion to  concentrate  all  his  efforts  to  break  through  the 
iron  ring,  while  the  Norman  rulers  had  to  hold  together 
the  whole  of  their  far-spread  territories  against  reaction 
and  rebellion  at  home  as  well  as  against  the  French  at 
Tours  and  LeMans  and  in  the  Vexin.  Meanwhile  up 
and  down  these  valleys  the  influences  of  trade,  com- 
merce, and  travel  were  at  work  breaking  down  the  polit- 
ical barriers  and  drawing  the  remoter  regions  toward  the 


126  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

geographical  centre.  The  rivers  in  their  courses  fought 
against  the  Plantagenets. 

The  personal  element  in  the  struggle  was  weighted 
against  the  Anglo-Norman  empire  even  more  strongly 
than  the  physiographic,  for  the  weak  links  in  the 
Plantagenet  succession  ran  parallel  to  the  strongest 
portion  of  the  Capetian  line.  Against  a knight-errant 
like  Richard  and  a trifler  like  John,  stood  a great 
European  statesman  in  the  person  of  Philip  Augustus, 
king  of  France  during  forty-four  years,  and  more 
than  any  single  man  the  creator  of  the  French  mon- 
archy. 

Philip  Augustus  was  not  an  heroic  figure,  and  to  the 
men  of  his  age  he  was  probably  less  sympathetic  than  his 
adversary  Richard.  Vigorous  and  enduring,  a generous 
liver,  quick-tempered  but  slow  to  cherish  hatred,  Philip 
was  preeminently  the  cautious,  shrewd,  unscrupulous, 
far-sighted  statesman.  He  could  fight  when  necessary, 
but  he  had  no  great  personal  courage  and  excelled  in 
strategy  and  prevision  rather  than  in  tactics  or  leader- 
ship in  the  field,  and  he  preferred  to  gain  his  ends  by 
the  arts  of  diplomacy.  The  quality  upon  which  all  his 
contemporaries  dwell  is  his  wisdom.  Throughout  his 
long  reign  he  kept  before  him  as  his  one  aim  the  increase 
of  the  royal  power,  and  by  his  patient  and  fortunate 
efforts  he  broke  down  the  Plantagenet  empire,  doubled 
the  royal  revenue  and  more  than  doubled  the  royal  do- 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  127 

main,  and  made  France  the  leading  international  power 
in  western  Europe. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  Philip  had  made  substantial 
headway  even  during  the  lifetime  of  Henry  II.  Crowned 
in  1179  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  a year  before  the  death 
of  his  paralytic  father  Louis  VII,  Philip  was  naturally 
treated  as  a boy  by  Henry,  who  seems,  however,  to  have 
acted  throughout  with  due  regard  to  Philip’s  position  as 
king  and  his  feudal  suzerain.  In  the  complications  of 
those  early  years  we  find  Henry  constantly  arranging 
disputes  with  the  king’s  vassals  and  more  than  once 
saving  him  from  a tight  place.  But  as  time  went  on  this 
relation  became  impossible.  Philip  openly  abetted  the 
revolts  of  the  Young  King  and  of  Richard,  and  in  the 
war  which  broke  out  at  the  end  Richard  fought  openly 
on  his  side.  As  soon,  however,  as  Richard  succeeded  to 
the  throne,  Philip  began  hostilities  with  him,  and  he 
soon  used  John  against  Richard  as  he  had  used  Rich- 
ard against  his  father.  “Divide  and  rule,”  was  clearly 
Philip’s  policy,  and  he  always  had  on  his  side  the  fact 
that  he  was  king  in  France  and  the  Plantagenets  on  the 
Continent  were  his  vassals. 

The  first  phase  of  the  contest  between  Richard  and 
Philip  comes  as  a welcome  interlude  in  the  tale  of  border 
disputes  and  family  rivalries  which  make  up  the  greater 
part  of  the  tangled  story  of  Philip’s  dealings  with  the 
Norman  empire.  It  takes  us  over  the  sea  to  the  fair  land 
of  Sicily  and  on  to  the  very  gates  of  the  Holy  City,  In 


128  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


1187  the  capture  of  Jerusalem  had  crowned  the  long 
efforts  of  the  great  Saladin,  and  where  a century  before 
Christian  knights  had  ridden  “ up  to  their  bridles  ” in  the 
blood  of  the  slaughtered  Moslem,  a procession  of  knights 
and  priests  and  poorer  folk  passed  out  of  the  gate  of 
David  and  left  the  Holy  Sepulchre  to  the  infidel.  To  the 
Saracens  a certain  sign  that  they  were  the  only  people 
“whose  doctrine  was  agreeable  to  God,”  the  fall  of 
Jerusalem  killed  the  aged  Pope,  plunged  Europe  into 
prayer  and  fasting,  and  brought  on  the  Third  Crusade, 
under  the  leadership  of  the  emperor  Frederick  Barba- 
rossa,  Philip  of  France,  and  Richard  of  England.  Rich- 
ard, then  merely  count  of  Poitou,  was  the  first  western 
prince  to  take  the  cross  in  this  holy  war;  his  father  and 
Philip  soon  sealed  their  crusading  vows  with  a public 
reconciliation  under  a great  elm  on  the  borders  of  Nor- 
mandy and  France,  and  the  chroniclers  tell  us  that 
every  man  made  peace  with  his  neighbor,  thinking  no 
more  of  tournaments  and  fine  raiment,  the  lust  of  the 
flesh  and  the  pride  of  the  eye,  but  only  of  the  recovery 
of  the  Holy  City.  Such  great  waves  of  renunciation  and 
religious  enthusiasm  are  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  but  their  force  was  soon  spent.  Then,  as 
in  other  times,  there  were  few  who  could  live  as  on  a 
mountain-top.  In  spite  of  all  that  the  church  could  do, 
Henry  and  Philip  soon  came  to  open  war,  and  the  cause 
of  Jerusalem  was  swallowed  up  in  a struggle  for  the  Loire 
and  for  Aquitanian  fortresses.  Richard,  as  we  have  seen, 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


129 

was  a central  point  in  these  conflicts,  and  his  accession 
to  the  throne  simply  continued  the  struggle  in  another 
form. 

Nevertheless  a peace  was  patched  up,  and  the  unwill- 
ing Philip  was  unable  to  hold  aloof  from  the  crusade 
which  fired  the  military  ardor  of  his  chief  vassal  and 
rival.  Large  sums  of  money  were  raised  by  every  means, 
and  the  two  kings  made  an  agreement  to  divide  equally 
all  the  spoil  of  their  expedition.  They  also  arranged  to 
go  by  sea  to  the  East  after  they  had  assembled  their 
ships  and  followers  at  Messina,  thus  avoiding  the  usual 
complications  with  the  Eastern  Empire  and  the  fatal 
march  through  the  barren  and  hostile  interior  of  Asia 
Minor  which  now  claimed  another  victim  in  the  gallant 
German  emperor.  At  the  best,  however,  a crusade  was 
not  an  organized  campaign  under  efficient  direction,  but 
merely  a number  of  independent  expeditions  which 
found  it  convenient  to  go  at  the  same  time  and  by  the 
same  route.  There  was  no  supreme  command,  and  there 
was  constant  jealousy  and  friction  between  feudal  lords 
who  were  ever  impatient  of  restraint  and  careful  of  points 
of  dignity  and  precedence.  The  presence  of  a king  was 
of  some  help,  the  presence  of  two  only  made  matters 
worse.  If  the  causes  of  rivalry  at  home  and  the  slighting 
of  Philip’s  sister  could  have  been  forgotten,  there  was  still 
the  fact  that  Richard  was  Philip’s  vassal  as  well  as  his 
equal,  and  Richard  was  not  of  the  type  to  spare  Philip’s 
susceptibilities.  Rich,  open-handed,  fond  of  display, 


130  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Lion-Heart  “loved  the  lime-light,”  and  his  overbear- 
ing nature  and  lack  of  tact  made  it  impossible  for  him  to 
cooperate  with  others.  He  characteristically  went  his 
own  way,  paying  scant  attention  to  Philip  and  acting  as 
if  the  leadership  of  the  expedition  belonged  to  himself  as 
a matter  of  course.  Relations  became  strained  during 
the  sojourn  at  Messina  and  grew  worse  in  Palestine, 
where  the  affairs  of  the  Latin  kingdom  and  the  rivalries 
of  lesser  princes  added  fuel  to  the  flame.  “The  two  kings 
and  peoples,”  says  an  English  chronicler,  “did  less  to- 
gether than  they  would  have  done  separately,  and  each 
set  but  light  store  by  the  other.”  Sick  of  the  whole  en- 
terprise, after  four  months  in  the  East,  Philip  seized  the 
first  excuse  to  return  home,  departing  in  August,  1191. 

Richard  stayed  a year  longer  in  Palestine,  yet  he  never 
entered  Jerusalem  and  had  finally  to  retire  with  a disap- 
pointing truce  and  to  spend  another  year,  and  more, 
languishing  in  German  prisons.  The  events  of  these 
months  do  not  concern  the  history'  of  Normandy,  but 
if  we  would  behold  Richard  in  his  fairest  light  we  must 
see  him  as  he  rushed  to  the  relief  of  Joppa  on  the  first  of 
August,  1192,  wading  ashore  from  his  red  galley  with  the 
cry,  “Perish  the  man  who  would  hang  back,”  covering 
the  landing  of  his  followers  with  his  crossbow,  making 
his  way  by  a winding  stair  to  the  house  of  the  Templars 
on  the  town  wall,  and  then,  sword  in  hand,  clearing  the 
town  of  three  thousand  Turks  and  pursuing  them  into 
the  plain  with  but  three  horsemen ; or,  four  days  later, 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


131 

repelling  a Mameluke  attack  in  force  by  a most  skilful 
tactical  arrangement  of  his  meagre  army,  directing  the 
battle  on  the  beach  while  he  also  kept  the  town  clear, 
“ slaying  innumerable  Turks  with  his  gleaming  sword, 
here  cleaving  a man  from  the  crown  of  his  head  to  his 
teeth,”  there  cutting  off  with  one  blow  the  head,  shoulder, 
and  right  arm  of  a Saracen  emir,  his  coat  of  mail  and  his 
horse  bristling  with  javelins  and  arrows  like  a hedgehog, 
yet  “remaining  unconquerable  and  unwounded  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  divine  decree.”  1 

What  most  concerned  the  Norman  empire  was  the 
king’s  absence  since  the  summer  of  1190,  prolonged  by 
his  captivity  in  Germany  until  the  spring  of  1194.  Al- 
though Philip  had  taken  an  oath  before  leaving  Pales- 
tine to  respect  Richard’s  men  and  possessions  during  his 
absence,  and  even  to  protect  them  like  his  own  city  of 
Paris,  he  sought  release  from  this  engagement  as  soon  as 
he  reached  Rome  on  his  homeward  journey,  and  once 
back  in  France  he  soon  began  active  preparations  for  an 
attack  on  the  Plantagenet  territories.  With  Richard  safe 
in  a German  dungeon,  he  seized  a large  part  of  the  Nor- 
man border  and  made  a secret  treaty  with  John  which 
secured  the  surrender  of  all  the  lands  east  of  the  Seine 
and  important  fortresses  in  Anjou  and  Touraine.  He 
offered  huge  sums  of  money  to  secure  Richard’s  custody 

1 See  the  extracts  from  the  chroniclers  translated  in  T.  A.  Archer,  The 
Crusade  of  Richard  I (London,  1888),  pp.  285  ff. 


132  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

or  even  his  continued  detention  in  Germany,  and  when 
early  in  1 1 94  he  warned  J ohn  that  ‘ ‘ the  Devil  was  loose  ’ ' 
at  last,  he  was  besieging  the  great  fortress  of  Verneuil  on 
the  Norman  frontier.  When  Richard  landed  at  Barfleur 
in  May,  amid  the  ringing  of  bells  and  processions  singing 
“God  has  come  again  in  his  strength,”  it  is  small  wonder 
that  he  came  breathing  vengeance  and  slaughter,  and 
that  the  rest  of  his  life  is  a record  of  scarcely  interrupted 
war  against  the  king  of  France.  For  many  years  he  is 
said  to  have  refused  the  sacrament  lest  he  might  have  to 
forgive  his  enemy.  Again  and  again  he  had  Philip  on  the 
run.  Once  Philip  lost  all  his  baggage  and  saved  himself 
by  turning  aside  to  hear  mass  while  Richard  rode  by;  on 
another  occasion  Richard  drove  the  French  into  Gisors 
so  that  the  bridge  broke  under  them  “and  the  king  of 
France  drank  of  the  river,  and  twenty  of  his  knights 
were  drowned.” 

Such  scenes,  however,  are  only  the  striking  episodes  in 
a series  of  campaigns  which  are  confused  and  compli- 
cated and  do  not  lend  themselves  to  clear  narration. 
Decisive  engagements  were  rare,  each  side  seeking 
rather  to  wear  out  the  other.  Money  was  spent  freely 
for  allies  and  mercenaries  — a contemporary  called  the 
struggle  one  between  the  pound  sterling  and  the  pound 
of  Tours,  and  the  advantage  was  on  the  side  of  the 
pounds  sterling  by  reason  of  their  greater  number. 
There  was  usually  a campaign  in  the  spring  and  summer, 
ending  in  a truce  in  the  autumn  which  the  church  tried 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


133 


to  prolong  into  a lasting  peace  but  which  soon  broke 
down  in  a new  war.  The  wars  were  for  the  most  part 
border  forays,  in  which  the  country  was  burned  and 
wasted  far  and  wide,  to  the  injury  chiefly  of  the  peas- 
ants, upon  whom  the  burden  of  mediaeval  warfare 
mainly  fell.  “First  destroy  the  land,  then  the  enemy,” 
was  the  watchword.  Booty  and  ransom  were  the  object 
as  well  as  military  advantages,  so  that  even  the  contests 
between  knights  had  their  sordid  side,  so  definitely  were 
they  directed  toward  taking  profitable  prisoners;  while 
feudal  notions  of  honor  might  cause  Richard  to  put  out 
the  eyes  of  fifteen  prisoners  and  send  them  to  Philip 
under  the  guidance  of  one  of  their  number  who  had  been 
left  one  eye,  whereupon  Philip  blinded  an  equal  number 
of  knights  and  sent  them  to  Richard  under  the  guidance 
of  the  wife  of  one  of  them,  “in  order,”  says  his  eulogist,1 
“that  no  one  should  think  he  was  afraid  of  Richard  or 
inferior  to  him  in  force  and  courage.” 

The  brunt  of  the  war  fell  on  Normandy  and  ulti- 
mately on  the  castles  which  supplied  the  duchy’s  lack 
of  natural  frontiers.  To  supplement  the  great  interior 
fortresses  of  Caen,  Falaise,  Argentan,  Montfort,  and 
Rouen,  Henry  I began  the  organization  of  a series  of 
fortifications  on  the  southern  and  eastern  borders. 
Henry  II,  we  are  told,  improved  or  renewed  nearly  all 
these  strongholds,  and  especially  Gisors,  the  frontier 
gateway  toward  France,  on  which  fortress  the  exchequer 
1 Guillaume  le  Breton,  Philippine,  v,  lines  316-27. 


134  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

roll  shows  him  expending  2650  pounds  Angevin  in  a 
single  year.  These  castles,  remains  of  many  of  which  are 
still  standing,  were  typical  of  the  best  military  architec- 
ture of  their  age,  but  they  were  inferior  in  strength  and 
scientific  construction  to  the  great  fortresses  of  Christian 
Syria,  such  as  Krak  or  Margat,  which  seem  to  have  gone 
back  to  Byzantine  and  even  Persian  models.  A keen 
warrior  like  Richard  had  not  spent  his  two  years  in  Pal- 
estine without  gaining  an  expert  knowledge  of  eastern 
methods  in  the  art  of  war,  and  we  are  not  surprised  to 
find  that  he  had  Saracen  soldiers  and  Syrian  artillery- 
men with  him  in  his  Norman  campaigns,  and  that  he 
made  large  use  of  oriental  experience  in  strengthening 
his  defences.  His  masterpiece,  of  course,  was  Chateau 
Gaillard,  the  saucy  castle  on  the  Seine  controlling  the 
passage  of  the  river  and  its  tributaries  in  that  region  of 
the  Norman  Vexin  which  was  the  great  bone  of  conten- 
tion between  the  Plantagenets  and  the  French  kings. 
Having  first  expropriated  at  great  expense  the  lord  of 
the  region,  the  archbishop  of  Rouen,  he  fortified  the 
adjacent  island  of  Andeli  and  laid  out  a new  town  on  the 
bank.  This  he  surrounded  with  water  and  reenforced 
with  towers  and  battlements,  protecting  the  whole  with 
a stockade  across  the  river  and  outlying  works  farther 
up.  Then  on  the  great  rock  above  he  built  the  fortress, 
with  its  triangular  advance  work,  its  elliptical  citadel, 
and  its  circular  keep  surrounded  by  a “fosse  cut  almost 
vertically  out  of  the  rock.”  There  was  no  dead  angie, 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  135 

such  as  permitted  sappers  to  reach  the  base  of  rectilinear 
walls,  but  instead  a sloping  base  down  which  projectiles 
might  ricochet ; nor  was  there,  as  at  the  corners  of  square 
towers,  any  part  of  the  surrounding  area  which  could 
not  be  reached  by  direct  fire  from  within.  “The  ap- 
proaches and  the  fosse,”  says  Dieulafoy,1  “were  covered 
by  the  fire  of  the  garrison  right  up  to  the  foot  of  the 
scarp,  and  no  sapper  could  touch  any  point  in  towers 
or  walls,  provided  that  the  fortress  was  under  the  direc- 
tion of  an  experienced  commander.”  This  qualification 
is  important,  for  the  new  type  of  fortification  was  de- 
signed for  an  active  defence,  one  might  almost  say  an 
offensive  defence,  and  not  for  the  mere  passive  resist- 
ance with  which  the  older  strategy  had  been  content. 
The  works  at  Andeli,  carried  on  largely  under  Richard’s 
personal  direction,  occupied  more  than  a year  of  labor 
and  cost  nearly  50,000  pounds  Angevin,  which  we  find 
distributed  in  the  royal  accounts  over  lumber  and  stone 
and  hardware,  and  among  masons  and  carpenters  and 
stone-cutters  and  lesser  laborers. 

By  the  year  1199  Richard  had  recovered  his  Norman 
possessions  save  Gisors  and  certain  castles  on  the  border, 
where  Philip  never  lost  his  foothold,  and  he  had  raised 
an  effective  barrier  to  French  advance  in  the  valley  of 
the  Seine.  Strong  allies  were  on  his  side,  and  the  diplo- 
matic situation  was  decidedly  in  his  favor.  Never  had 

1 Le  Chdteau-Gaillard,  in  Memoires  de  I’Academie  des  Inscriptions, 
xxxvi,  i,  p.  330. 


136  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Philip  been  so  hard  pressed,  and  even  the  friendly  legate 
of  the  Pope  could  secure  for  him  nothing  better  than 
the  retention  of  Gisors  in  the  truce  which  was  then 
drawn  up.  And  then  a second  stroke  of  fortune,  greater 
even  than  the  captivity  of  1192,  came  to  Philip’s  aid. 
Richard,  impetuous  and  headstrong  as  ever,  spoiled  all 
by  a raid  on  an  Aquitanian  rebel  in  which  he  lost  his 
life.  His  energy,  his  military  skill,  and  his  vivid  per- 
sonality had  concealed  the  fundamental  weakness  of  his 
position  against  France ; his  removal  meant  the  swift  fall 
of  the  Norman  empire. 

At  Richard’s  death  there  were  two  possible  succes- 
sors, his  younger  brother  John,  whom  he  had  designated 
heir,  and  his  nephew  Arthur,  son  of  his  elder  brother 
Geoffrey  and  duke  of  Brittany.  There  was  enough  un- 
certainty in  feudal  law  to  admit  of  a plausible  case  for 
either  one,  but  Arthur  was  only  twelve  and  John  quickly 
took  possession,  being  crowned  at  Rouen  in  April  and  at 
Westminster  in  May.  Arthur,  however,  had  the  follow- 
ing of  his  Bretons  and,  what  was  more  important,  the 
support  of  Philip  Augustus,  who  used  Arthur  against 
John  as  he  had  used  John  against  Richard  and  Richard 
against  his  father.  Philip  confirmed  Arthur  as  count  of 
Anjou,  Maine,  and  Touraine,  and  soon  brought  him  to 
Paris,  where  he  was  betrothed  to  Philip’s  daughter. 
Nevertheless  the  course  of  events  at  first  favored  John. 
Philip  was  in  the  midst  of  the  great  struggle  with  Pope 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


137 


Innocent  III  over  the  divorce  of  his  queen  Ingeborg, 
and  a treaty  was  signed  in  1200,  by  which,  on  giving  up 
territory  in  the  Norman  border  and  in  central  France 
and  paying  a large  relief  of  20,000  marks  for  his  lands, 
John  was  confirmed  in  his  control  of  Anjou  and  Brit- 
tany, while  a visit  to  Paris,  where  he  was  splendidly 
received,  seemed  to  crown  the  reconciliation.  In  a posi- 
tion, however,  where  all  possible  strength  and  resource- 
fulness were  required,  John’s  defects  of  character  proved 
fatal.  No  one  could  depend  upon  him  for  loyalty,  judg- 
ment, or  even  persistence,  and  he  quickly  earned  his 
name  of  “Soft-Sword.” 

Meanwhile  the  legally-minded  Philip,  while  spending 
money  freely  on  John’s  followers  and  abating  nothing 
of  his  diplomatic  and  military  efforts,  brought  to  bear 
the  weapons  of  law.  The  revival  of  legal  studies  in  the 
twelfth  century  had  given  rise  in  western  Europe  to  a 
body  of  professional  lawyers,  skilled  in  the  Roman  and 
the  canon  law,  and  quick  to  turn  their  learning  to  the 
advantage  of  the  princes  whom  they  served.  Philip  had 
a number  of  such  advisers  at  his  court,  and  they  doubt- 
less contributed  to  the  more  lawyerlike  methods  of 
doing  things  which  make  their  appearance  in  his  reign; 
but  it  was  feudal  custom,  and  not  Roman  law,  that  he 
used  against  John.  In  law  John  was  Philip’s  vassal,  — 
indeed,  he  had  just  confessed  as  much  in  the  treaty  of 
1200,  — and  as  such  was  held  to  attend  Philip’s  feudal 
court  and  subject  himself  to  its  decision  in  disputes 


138  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

with  other  vassals.  It  might  be  urged  that  the  king  of 
England  was  too  great  a man  to  submit  to  such  juris- 
diction, and  that  the  duke  of  Normandy  had  been  in 
the  habit  of  satisfying  his  feudal  obligations  by  a formal 
ceremony  at  the  Norman  frontier;  still  the  technical 
law  was  on  the  side  of  the  king  of  France,  and  a suzerain 
had  at  last  come  who  was  able  to  translate  theory  into 
fact.  In  the  course  of  a series  of  adventures  in  Poitou 
John  carried  off  the  fiancee  of  one  of  his  barons  of  the 
house  of  Lusignan,  who  appealed  to  his  superior  lord, 
the  king  of  France.  All  this  was  in  due  form,  but  Philip 
was  no  lion  of  justice  eager  to  redress  injuries  for  jus- 
tice’ sake.  He  waited  nearly  two  years,  John’s  visit  to 
Paris  falling  in  the  interval,  and  then,  when  he  was 
ready  to  execute  sentence,  promptly  summoned  John 
before  the  feudal  court  of  peers.  John  neither  came  nor 
appeared  through  a representative,  and  the  court  in 
April,  1202,  declared  him  deprived  of  all  his  lands  for 
having  refused  to  obey  his  lord’s  commands  or  render 
the  services  due  from  him  as  vassal.  The  capture  of 
Arthur  temporarily  checked  Philip;  the  boy’s  murder 
by  John  in  the  course  of  1203  simply  recoiled  on  the 
murderer.  Whether  this  crime  led  to  a second  con- 
demnation by  the  court  of  peers,  as  was  alleged  by  the 
French  at  the  time  of  the  abortive  invasion  of  England 
in  1216,  is  a question  which  has  been  sharply  discussed 
among  scholars.  What  has  now  become  the  orthodox 
view  holds  that  there  was  no  second  condemnation, 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


139 


but  a clever  case  has  recently  been  made  by  Powicke, 
who,  minimizing  the  importance  of  the  accepted  argu- 
ment from  the  silence  of  immediate  contemporaries, 
argues,  on  the  basis  of  the  Annals  of  Mar  gam,  that 
there  probably  was  a second  condemnation  in  1204. 
After  all,  the  question  is  of  subordinate  importance,  for 
Philip’s  effective  action  was  based  on  the  trial  of  1202, 
and  by  1204  John’s  fate  was  already  sealed. 

The  decisive  point  in  the  campaign  against  Nor- 
mandy was  the  capture  of  Chateau  Gaillard,  the  key  to 
the  Seine  valley,  in  May,  1204,  after  a siege  of  six 
months  which  seems  to  have  justified  its  designer,  save 
for  a stone  bridge  which  sheltered  the  engineers  who 
undermined  the  outer  wall.  Western  Normandy  fell 
before  an  attack  from  the  side  of  Brittany;  the  great 
fortresses  of  the  centre,  Argentan,  Falaise,  and  Caen, 
opened  their  gates  to  Philip ; and  with  the  surrender  of 
Rouen,  24  June,  1204,  Philip  was  master  of  Normandy. 
John  had  lingered  in  England,  doing  nothing  to  support 
the  defense,  and  when  he  crossed  at  last  in  1206  he  was 
obliged  to  sign  a final  surrender  of  all  the  territories 
north  of  the  Loire,  retaining  only  southern  Poitou  and 
Gascony.  Gascony  and  England  were  united  for  two 
centuries  longer,  but  the  only  connection  was  by  sea. 
The  control  of  the  Seine  and  the  Loire  had  been  lost, 
and  with  that  passed  away  the  Plantagenet  empire. 

The  results  of  the  separation  of  Normandy  from 


140  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

England  have  been  a favorite  subject  with  historians, 
and  especially  with  those  who  approach  the  Middle 
Ages  from  the  point  of  view  of  modern  politics  and 
modern  ideas  of  nationality.  It  all  seems  so  natural 
that  Normandy  should  belong  with  France  and  not 
with  England.  Nationality,  however,  is  an  elusive 
thing,  and  many  forces  besides  geography  have  made 
the  modern  map.  England  in  the  Middle  Ages  had 
much  more  in  common  with  Normandy  than  she  had 
with  Wales  or  Scotland,  while  in  feeling,  as  well  as  in 
space,  the  Irish  Sea  was  wider  than  the  Channel.  From 
the  English  point  of  view  there  was  nothing  inevitable 
in  the  loss  of  Normandy.  On  the  French  side  the  mat- 
ter is  more  obvious.  If  Paris  was  to  be  the  capital,  it 
must  control  the  Seine  and  the  Loire,  and  when  it 
gained  control  of  them,  its  position  in  France  was  as- 
sured. The  possession  of  Normandy  meant  far  more  to 
France  than  to  England.  Moreover  the  conquest  of 
Normandy  cut  England  and  France  loose  from  each 
other.  The  Anglo-Norman  barons  must  decide  whether 
they  would  serve  the  king  of  England  or  the  king  of 
France,  and  they  were  quickly  absorbed  into  the  coun- 
try with  which  they  threw  in  their  lot.  It  was  no  longer 
possible  to  play  one  set  of  interests  against  another; 
turned  back  on  themselves,  the  English  barons  met 
John  on  their  own  ground  and  won  the  Great  Charter, 
so  that  the  loss  of  Normandy  has  a direct  bearing  on 
the  growth  of  English  liberty.  “When  the  Normans 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  141 

became  French,”  concludes  Powicke,  “they  did  a great 
deal  more  than  bring  their  national  epic  to  a close. 
They  permitted  the  English  once  more  to  become  a 
nation,  and  they  established  the  French  state  for  all 
time.”  1 

Viewed  in  this  way,  the  end  of  Normandy  almost 
seems  more  glorious  than  Normandy  itself;  as  was  said 
of  Samson,  “the  dead  which  he  slew  at  his  death  were 
more  than  they  which  he  slew  in  his  life.”  But  of 
course  in  the  larger  sense  the  work  of  the  Norman  em- 
pire was  not  ended  in  1204.  For  one  thing,  the  admin- 
istrative organization  of  the  Norman  duchy  could  not 
fail  to  exert  an  influence  upon  the  French  monarchy. 
In  spite  of  the  great  progress  made  by  the  Capetian 
kings  of  the  twelfth  century,  the  Norman  government 
still  maintained  its  marked  superiority  as  a system  of 
judicial  and  fiscal  administration,  and  Philip  Augustus 
was  not  the  man  to  neglect  the  lessons  it  might  have 
for  him.  The  nature  and  extent  of  Norman  influence 
upon  French  institutions  is  a subject  which  is  still  dark 
to  us  and  for  lack  of  evidence  may  always  remain  dark ; 
but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Norman  precedents 
were  followed  at  various  points  in  the  development  of 
the  Parlement  of  Paris  and  in  the  elaboration  of  the 
French  financial  system.  In  the  main,  however,  the 
influence  was  inevitably  in  the  other  direction,  from 
France  upon  Normandy,  not  from  Normandy  upon 
1 The  Loss  of  Normandy , p.  449. 


142  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

France.  There  was,  it  is  true,  no  sudden  change.  Philip 
respected  vested  interests,  both  in  the  church  and 
among  the  barons,  and  preserved  Norman  customs,  so 
that  the  duchy  long  retained  its  individuality  of  law, 
of  local  organization,  and  of  character,  and  secured  its 
rights  from  Louis  X in  a document  of  1315,  the  Charte 
aux  Normands,  which  has  sometimes  been  compared 
in  a small  way  to  the  Great  Charter.  The  Coutume  de 
Normandie  persisted,  like  the  customs  of  the  other 
great  provinces,  until  the  French  Revolution,  but  it  was 
a body  of  custom  worked  out  under  the  influence  of  the 
central  government  and  gradually  absorbing  the  juris- 
prudence of  the  king’s  court.  If  the  Norman  exchequer 
continued  to  sit  at  Rouen,  it  was  presided  over  by 
commissioners  sent  out  from  Paris.  Even  that  most 
characteristic  of  Norman  institutions,  trial  by  jury, 
was  insensibly  modified  by  the  new  inquisitorial  pro- 
cedure of  the  thirteenth  century  and  silently  disap- 
peared from  the  practice  of  the  Continent.  As  in  law 
and  government,  so  in  culture  and  social  life,  the  forces 
of  centralization  did  their  work  none  the  less  effectively 
because  they  were  gradual,  and  Normandy  became  a 
part  of  France. 

There  was,  it  is  true,  a period  when  Normandy  was 
once  more  united  to  England,  this  time  as  a conquered 
country.  Between  1417  and  1419  Henry  V subdued 
Normandy  in  a series  of  well-conducted  campaigns,  and 
he  and  his  son  remained  in  possession  of  the  duchy  un- 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


143 


til  1450.  During  this  period  of  English  rule  no  effort 
seems  to  have  been  made  to  restore  earlier  conditions 
which  had  now  been  outgrown:  law,  local  government, 
fiscal  organization  continued  unchanged.  English  offi- 
cials were,  of  course,  appointed,  and  English  immigra- 
tion was  encouraged  at  the  expense  of  the  lands  of  the 
Normans  who  had  left  the  province.  The  first  Norman 
university  was  founded  at  Caen  in  the  reign  of  Henry 
VI.  In  the  face,  however,  of  all  efforts  at  conciliation 
and  fair  treatment  the  population  remained  hostile. 
The  idea  that  the  Englishman  was  a foreigner  had 
grown  up  during  two  centuries  of  absence;  it  was  to 
crystallize  definitely  as  the  conception  of  French  na- 
tionality took  form  through  the  work  of  Joan  of  Arc. 
Lavisse  has  reminded  us1  that  this  war  “was  not  a con- 
flict between  one  nation  and  another,  between  the  gen- 
ius of  one  people  and  that  of  another;  nevertheless  it 
continued,  and  was  fierce  as  well  as  long.  From  year  to 
year  the  hatred  against  the  English  increased.  In  con- 
tact with  the  foreigner  France  began  to  know  herself, 
like  the  ego  in  contact  with  the  non-ego.  Vanquished 
she  felt  the  disgrace  of  defeat.  Acts  of  municipal  and 
local  patriotism  preceded  and  heralded  French  patriot- 
ism, which  finally  blossomed  out  in  Joan  of  Arc,  and 
sanctified  itself  with  the  perfume  of  a miracle.  Out  of 
France  with  the  English!  They  left  France,  and  France 

1 General  View  of  the  Political  History  of  Europe  (translated  by  Charles 
Gross),  p.  64. 


144  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

came  into  existence.”  In  this  rapid  growth  of  French 
national  consciousness  Normandy  had  its  full  share, 
and  some  of  its  great  scenes  are  set  on  Norman  soil.  It 
was  at  Rouen  that  Joan  of  Arc  was  tried  and  condemned 
by  the  Inquisition;  it  was  in  the  old  market-place  of 
this  same  city  that  the  English  soldiers  discovered  too 
late  that  they  had  burned  a saint. 

And  so  it  came  about  that  twenty  years  later  the 
Normans  welcomed  the  troops  of  Charles  VII  and 
passed  finally  under  French  sway.  Proud  of  its  past, 
proud  also  of  its  provincialisms  and  local  peculiarities, 
Normandy  was  nevertheless  French  in  feeling  and  in- 
terests, and  grew  more  French  with  time  under  the 
unifying  force  of  the  absolute  monarchy,  the  Revolu- 
tion, and  the  modern  republic.  It  ceased  to  be  a duchy 
in  1467;  it  ceased  to  be  even  a political  division  with 
the  creation  of  the  modern  departments  in  1790.  Its 
last  survival  as  an  area  recognized  by  the  government, 
the  ecclesiastical  province  of  Rouen,  disappeared  with 
the  final  separation  of  church  and  state  in  1905.  The 
only  unity  which  its  five  departments  now  retain  is 
that  of  the  history  and  tradition  of  a common  past  — 
of  a petite  patrie  now  swallowed  up  in  the  nation. 

Only  at  one  point  did  the  old  Normandy  really  main- 
tain itself  against  the  forces  of  centralization,  namely 
in  the  Channel  Islands,  those  ‘‘bits  of  France  fallen 
into  the  sea  and  picked  up  by  England,”  as  Victor 
Hugo  calls  them.  These  were  not  conquered  by  Philip 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE 


145 

or  his  successors,  and  have  remained  from  that  day  to 
this  attached  to  the  English  crown.  They  still  have 
their  baillis  and  vicomtes,  their  knights’  fees  and  feudal 
modes  of  tenure.  The  Norman  dialect  is  still  their  lan- 
guage; the  Coutume  de  Normandie  is  still  the  basis  of 
their  law ; and  one  may  still  hear,  in  disputes  concerning 
property  in  Jersey  and  Guernsey,  the  old  cry  of  haro 
which  preserves  one  of  the  most  archaic  features  of 
Norman  procedure. 

After  all  is  said,  it  is  in  England  that  the  most  perma- 
nent work  of  the  Normans  survives.  They  created  the 
English  central  government  and  impressed  upon  it  their 
conceptions  of  order  and  of  law.  Their  feudalism  per- 
meated English  society;  their  customs  shaped  much  of 
English  jurisprudence;  their  kings  and  nobles  were  the 
dominant  class  in  English  government.  Freeman  could 
never  understand  those  who  claimed  that,  as  he  declared, 
'‘we  English  are  not  ourselves  but  somebody  else.”  The 
fact,  however,  remains  that  in  a mixed  race  — and  all 
races  are  to  some  extent  mixed  — there  is  no  such  thing 
as  ‘ourselves’;  and  if  the  numerical  preponderance  in 
the  English  people  is  largely  that  of  pre-Norman  ele- 
ments, the  Norman  strain  has  exerted  an  influence  out 
of  all  proportion  to  its  numerical  strength.  Without 
William  the  Conqueror  and  Henry  II  the  English  would 
not  be  ‘themselves,’  whatever  else  they  might  have 
become. 


1 


146  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

For  a more  specific  illustration  let  us  come  back  once 
more  to  the  jury.  If  the  jury  died  out  in  Normandy,  it 
survived  in  England,  where  it  flourished  in  the  fertile  soil 
of  the  popular  local  courts.  It  spread  to  the  British 
colonies  and  to  the  United  States;  it  has  in  recent  times 
been  reintroduced  on  the  Continent.  But  it  is  still  the 
same  fundamental  institution,  bound  by  direct  continu- 
ity with  the  old  Frankish  procedure  through  the  Nor- 
man inquests  of  the  twelfth  century.  Wherever  the 
twelve  good  men  and  true  are  gathered  together,  we  can 
see  the  juries  of  Henry  II  behind  them.  In  such  matters 
the  Norman  influence  is  thus  as  wide  as  the  common 
law;  we  are  all  heirs  of  the  early  Normans.  As  Freeman 
well  says:  “We  can  never  be  as  if  the  Norman  had  never 
come  among  us.  We  ever  bear  about  us  the  signs  of  his 
presence.  Our  colonists  have  carried  those  signs  with 
them  into  distant  lands,  to  remind  men  that  settlers  in 
America  and  Australia  came  from  a land  which  the 
Norman  once  entered  as  a conqueror.”  1 

Our  survey  of  Norman  history  might  perhaps  stop 
here;  but  it  needs  to  be  rounded  out  in  two  directions. 
We  have  been  so  busy  with  the  external  history  of  the 
Norman  empire  and  with  the  constitutional  develop- 
ments to  which  it  gave  rise,  that  we  have  had  no  time  to 
examine  the  society  and  culture  of  Normandy  in  its 
flourishing  period  of  imperialism.  And  we  have  been 

1 William  the  Conqueror , p.  2. 


NORMANDY  AND  FRANCE  147 

concentrating  our  attention  so  exclusively  on  the  do- 
minions of  the  Plantagenets  that  we  have  left  out  of 
view  that  greater  Normandy  to  the  south  which  con- 
stitutes one  of  the  most  brilliant  chapters  of  Norman 
achievement  and  one  of  the  most  fascinating  subjects 
of  European  history.  These  topics  will  be  the  themes  of 
the  three  remaining  lectures. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

The  best  account  of  the  downfall  of  the  Norman  empire  is  Powicke, 
The  Loss  of  Normandy , where  abundant  references  will  be  found  to 
further  material.  The  general  narratives  of  Adams,  Davis,  and  Ram- 
say may  also  be  consulted,  as  well  as  Miss  Norgate,  John  Lackland 
(London,  1902).  For  the  French  side  see  Luchaire,  in  Lavisse,  His - 
toire  de  France , hi,  1.  The  fullest  treatment  of  relations  between  the 
Plantagenets  and  France,  down  to  1199,  is  A.  Cartellieri,  Philipp 
II.  August  (Leipzig,  1899-1910),  supplemented  by  his  Richard 
Lowenherz  im  heiligen  Lande,  in  Historische  Zeitschrift,  ci,  pp.  1-27 
(1908),  and  Philipp  II.  August  und  der  Zusammenbruch  des  angiovin- 
ischen  Reiches  (Leipzig,  1913).  For  the  controversy  concerning  John’s 
condemnation  by  the  court  of  Philip,  see  Gross,  Sources  and  Litera- 
ture, nos.  2829,  2833.  Characterizations  of  Richard  and  John  by 
Stubbs  will  be  found  in  his  Historical  Introductions , pp.  315  ff.,  439  ff. 
J.  Lehmann,  Johann  ohne  Land  (Berlin,  1904),  is  more  favorable 
to  John.  The  biography  of  the  Young  King  is  traced  by  P.  C.  E. 
Hodgson,  Jung  Heinrich , Konig  von  England  (Jena,  1906). 

There  is  no  general  work  on  the  English  occupation  of  Normandy  in 
the  fifteenth  century;  the  scattered  monographs  are  mentioned  in 
Prentout,  La  Normandie , pp.  71-76.  Something  may  be  expected  from 
the  continuation  of  the  late  J.  H.  Wylie’s  work  on  the  reign  of  Henry  V. 


VI 

NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE 

IN  turning  from  the  general  course  of  Norman  his- 
tory in  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  to  ex- 
amine Norman  life  and  culture  in  this  period,  we 
encounter  the  difficulties  inherent  in  any  attempt  to 
cut  a cross-section  of  human  society  in  an  age  which 
was  not  conscious  of  being  a society  and  has  left  us  for 
the  description  of  itself  only  raw  materials  of  a fragmen- 
tary and  uneven  sort.  The  chroniclers  confine  them- 
selves almost  entirely  to  external  events,  the  charters 
deal  chiefly  with  land  and  boundaries  and  rights  over 
the  land,  much  of  the  literature  is  theological  commen- 
tary or  rhetorical  commonplace  which  reflects  nothing 
of  the  age  in  which  it  was  written ; what  is  lacking  in  all 
is  the  concrete  detail  of  daily  life  from  which  alone  social 
and  economic  conditions  and  even  government  itself  can 
be  understood.  And  when  we  have  pieced  together  as 
best  we  may  some  notions  of  Normandy  in  this  period, 
our  knowledge  of  the  parallel  conditions  in  other  regions 
is  often  so  inadequate  that  we  cannot  be  certain  how  far 
our  results  are  characteristic  of  Normandy,  how  far 
typical  of  the  time,  or,  because  of  the  scattered  nature  of 
our  material,  how  far  they  may  be  merely  individual  and 
isolated.  Much  of  the  social  history  of  the  Middle  Ages 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  149 

is  still  unwritten;  for  lack  of  evidence  much  can  never 
be  written.  Until  the  available  sources  have  been  more 
fully  explored,  nothing  beyond  a provisional  sketch  can 
be  attempted. 

Fortunately  for  our  purposes,  the  fundamental  struc- 
ture of  society  in  the  earlier  Middle  Ages  was  exceed- 
ingly simple.  There  were  three  classes,  those  who 
fought,  those  who  labored,  and  those  who  prayed,  cor- 
responding respectively  to  the  nobles,  the  peasants,  and 
the  clergy.  Created  by  the  simple  needs  of  the  feudal 
age,  this  primitive  division  of  labor  was  even  declared 
an  institution  of  divine  origin  and  necessary  to  the  har- 
monious life  of  man.  It  seemed  right  and  natural  that 
the  nobles  should  defend  the  country  and  maintain 
order,  the  clergy  lead  men  to  salvation,  the  peasants 
support  by  their  labor  these  two  beneficent  classes,  as 
well  as  themselves.  As  an  ideal  of  social  organization, 
this  system  of  classes  is  open  to  obvious  objections,  not 
the  least  of  which  is  the  persistent  killing  and  plundering 
of  the  peasants  by  the  class  whose  function  it  was  to 
protect  and  defend  them ; but  as  a description  of  actual 
conditions,  it  expresses  very  well  the  facts  of  the  case. 

With  respect  to  the  fighting  class,  it  is  characteristic 
of  the  Norman  habit  of  order  and  organization  that  the 
military  service  of  the  nobles  was  early  defined  with 
more  system  and  exactness  in  Normandy  than  in  the 
neighboring  countries  of  northern  France.  We  have  al- 


150  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

ready  seen  that  at  a period  well  before  1066  the  amount 
of  service  due  from  the  great  lords  to  the  duke  had  been 
fixed  in  rough  units  of  five  or  multiples  of  five,  and  these 
again  subdivided  among  their  vassals  and  attached  to 
specific  pieces  of  land  which  were  hence  called  knights’ 
fees,  an  arrangement  which  the  Normans  carried  to  Eng- 
land and  probably  to  Sicily  as  well.  By  1172,  when  a 
comprehensive  list  was  first  drawn  up,  subinfeudation 
had  produced  about  1500  knights’  fees  in  Normandy, 
the  largest  holders  being  the  bishop  of  Bayeux  and  the 
earl  of  Leicester  with  120,  the  count  of  Ponthieu  with 
hi,  and  Earl  Giffard  with  103.  From  these  the  class  of 
fully  armed  knights  reached  down  to  the  holders  of 
small  fractions  of  a knight’s  fee,  all  however  serving 
with  the  full  armor  which  in  course  of  time  came  to 
mark  them  off  as  nobles  from  the  vavassors,  or  free  sol- 
diers, whose  equipment  was  less  complete  and  whose 
service  tended  to  take  the  form  of  castle  guard  and  simi- 
lar duties.  Quite  early  also  custom  had  defined  other 
characteristic  features  of  the  feudal  service  in  Nor- 
mandy, such  as  the  period  of  forty  days,  the  limitation 
of  the  obligation  to  the  frontiers  of  the  duchy,  and  the 
incidents  of  wardship  and  marriage,  deductions  from 
feudal  principles  which  were  here  carried  to  their  logical 
conclusions. 

The  symbol  of  the  authority  of  the  military  class,  the 
outward  and  visible  sign  of  feudalism,  was  the  castle, 
where  the  lord  resided  and  from  which  he  exercised  his 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  15 1 

authority  over  his  fief.  Originating  in  the  period  of 
anarchy  which  accompanied  the  dissolution  of  the 
Frankish  empire  and  the  invasions  of  the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries,  the  castle  spread  over  northern  France 
as  feudalism  spread,  and  was  introduced  into  England 
by  the  Normans  when  they  here  established  their  feudal 
state.  The  earliest  castles  of  Normandy  and  of  England 
were  not,  however,  the  massive  stone  donjons  which 
Freeman  peopled  with  devils  and  evil  men.  With  some 
exceptions,  of  which  the  Tower  of  London  is  the  most 
noteworthy,  these  ‘hateful  structures’  were  built  of 
wood  and  surrounded  by  a stockade,  surmounting  an 
artificial  mound,  or  motte,  thrown  up  from  the  deep  moat 
at  its  base.  A great  drawbridge,  cleated  so  that  horses 
should  not  slip  on  the  steep  incline,  led  from  the  farther 
side  of  the  moat  directly  to  the  second  story  of  the  tower, 
of  which  the  ground  floor,  used  only  for  stores  and  the 
custody  of  prisoners,  had  no  entrance  from  without. 
Fortresses  of  this  type  have  naturally  left  nothing  be- 
hind them  save  the  outlines  of  their  mounds  and  moats, 
but  they  are  well  known  from  contemporary  descrip- 
tions and  are  clearly  discernible  in  the  Bayeux  Tapestry, 
which  gives  rude  pictures  of  the  strongholds  of  Dol, 
Rennes,  Dinan,  and  Bayeux,  and  shows  a stockaded 
mound  in  actual  process  of  construction  at  Hastings. 
The  heavy  timbers  of  these  lofty  block-houses  offered 
stout  resistance  to  battering  rams,  but  they  were  always 
in  great  danger  from  fire,  and  wood  was  replaced  by 


152  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

stone  in  the  course  of  the  twelfth  century,  to  which 
belong  the  ‘stern  square  towers’  which  still  survive  in 
Normandy  and  England,  as  well  as  the  earliest  examples 
of  the  more  defensible  round  keeps  and  square  keeps 
flanked  with  round  towers.  Whether  of  wood  or  stone, 
the  donjon  was  a stern  place,  built  for  strength  rather 
than  for  comfort,  and  bending  the  life  of  those  within  it 
to  the  imperious  necessities  of  defence.  Space  was  at  a 
premium,  windows  were  few  and  small,  — sometimes 
only  a single  window  and  a single  room  to  each  story,  — 
trap-doors  and  ladders  often  did  the  work  of  stairways, 
and  from  the  wooden  castles  fires  were  usually  excluded. 
Nevertheless  the  donjons  were  not,  as  was  once  sup- 
posed, mere  “towers  of  refuge  used  only  in  time  of  war,” 
but  “were  the  permanent  residences  of  the  nobles  of 
the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries.”  1 Only  toward  the 
close  of  this  period  do  the  outer  buildings  develop,  so  as 
to  give  something  of  the  room  and  convenience  de- 
manded by  the  rising  standard  of  comfort;  only  in  the 
thirteenth  century  do  the  more  spacious  castles  without 
keeps  begin  to  make  their  appearance. 

It  is  significant  of  the  progress  made  by  the  ducal 
authority  in  Normandy  that  by  the  time  of  William  the 
Conqueror  definite  restrictions  had  been  placed  upon 
the  creation  of  these  strongholds  of  local  power  and 
resistance.  Except  with  the  duke’s  license  no  one  could 
build  a castle,  or  erect  a fortress  on  a rock  or  an  island, 
1 Armitage,  Early  Norman  Castles  of  the  British  Isles,  p.  359. 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  153 

or  even  dig  a fosse  in  the  open  country  so  deep  that  the 
earth  could  not  be  thrown  out  from  the  bottom  without 
artificial  aid,  while  palisades  were  required  to  be  built 
in  a simple  line  and  without  alures  or  special  works  of 
defence.  When  the  duke  desired,  he  might  also  place 
garrisons  in  his  barons’  castles  and  demand  hostages  for 
their  loyalty.  These  principles,  which  were  applied  also 
in  England,  were  of  course  often  difficult  to  enforce,  and 
they  were  supplemented  in  the  twelfth  century  by  the 
development  of  a great  system  of  ducal  castles,  secured 
partly  by  enlarging  and  strengthening  the  older  for- 
tresses of  Rouen,  Caen,  Falaise,  and  Argentan,  partly, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  by  new  strongholds  on  the 
frontiers.  Powicke  has  shown  us  how  these  castles  be- 
came the  chief  administrative  centres  in  the  reigns  of 
Henry  II  and  Richard,  and  how  the  royal  letters  and 
accounts  reveal  their  many-sided  activity  in  the  busy 
days  of  peace  as  well  as  in  the  more  strenuous  times  of 
war.1  Under  chdtelains  who  were  royal  officers  rather 
than  feudal  vassals,  with  garrisons  of  mercenaries  and 
retinues  of  knights  and  serjeants,  clerks  and  chaplains 
and  personal  servants,  they  foreshadow  the  ultimate 
replacement  of  baronial  donjons  by  a royal  bureaucracy. 

It  is  doubtless  because  of  the  dominant  position  of  the 
duke  that  Normandy  is  less  rich  than  some  other  parts 
of  France  in  picturesque  types  of  feudal  lords  or  vivid 
episodes  of  feudal  conflicts.  When  they  go  beyond  the 
1 The  Loss  of  Normandy,  pp.  298  ff. 


154  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

affairs  of  the  church,  the  Norman  chroniclers  are  prone 
to  concentrate  their  attention  upon  the  deeds  of  the  du- 
cal house,  and  their  accounts  of  the  great  vassals  tend  to 
be  dry  and  genealogical.  The  chief  exception  is  Orderi- 
cus  Vitalis,  whose  theme  and  geographical  position  lead 
him  to  treat  at  length  the  long  anarchy  under  Robert 
Curthose  and  the  incessant  conflicts  of  the  great  lords 
his  neighbors  on  the  southern  border,  the  houses  of 
Bell&ne,  Grentemaisnil,  Conches,  and  Breteuil.  In  the 
main  it  is  a dreary  tale  of  surprises  and  sieges,  of  treach- 
ery and  captivity  and  sudden  death,  relieved  from  time 
to  time  by  brighter  episodes  — the  lady  Isabel  of 
Conches  sitting  in  the  great  hall  as  the  young  men  of  the 
castle  tell  their  dreams ; the  daily  battle  for  bread  around 
the  oven  at  the  siege  of  Courcy ; the  table  spread  and  the 
pots  seething  on  the  coals  for  the  lord  and  lady  of  Saint- 
Ceneri  who  never  came  back;  the  man  of  Saint-Evroul 
who,  by  the  saint’s  aid,  walks  unharmed  out  of  custody 
at  Domfront;  the  marvellous  vision  of  the  army  of 
knights  and  ladies  in  torment  which  appeared  to  the 
priest  of  Bonneval. 

With  these  episodes  of  Norman  feudalism  it  is  inter- 
esting to  compare  the  picture  of  Anglo-Norman  society 
a hundred  years  later  which  we  find  in  that  unique  piece 
of  feudal  biography,  the  History  of  William  the  Marshal. 
Companion  to  the  Young  King  and  witness  of  the  final 
shame  of  Henry  II,  pilgrim  to  Jerusalem  and  Cologne, 
advanced  to  positions  of  trust  under  Richard  and  John, 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  155 

earl  of  Striguil  and  Pembroke  and  regent  of  England 
under  Henry  III,  the  Earl  Marshal  stood  in  close  rela- 
tions to  the  chief  men  and  movements  of  his  day.  His 
biographer,  however,  does  not  let  himself  wander  to  tell 
of  others’  deeds,  and  while  his  work  contains  material 
of  much  importance  for  the  general  history  of  the  time, 
its  chief  value  lies  in  its  reflection  of  the  life  of  the  age 
and  its  faithful  portrait  of  the  man  himself  — soldier  of 
fortune,  gentleman-adventurer  if  you  will,  but  always 
loyal,  honorable,  straightforward,  and  true,  by  the 
standards  of  his  time  a man  without  fear  and  without 
reproach.  Brought  up  in  the  Norman  castle  of  Tancar- 
ville,  the  Marshal,  like  the  Young  King  his  master, 
became  passionately  addicted  to  tournaments,  par  Emi- 
nence the  knightly  sport  of  the  Middle  Ages,  which 
made  hunting  and  other  pastimes  seem  tame  and  fur- 
nished the  best  preparation  for  real  war,  since,  as  an 
English  chronicler  tells  us,  in  order  to  shine  in  war  a 
knight  “must  have  seen  his  own  blood  flow,  have  had 
his  jaw  crack  under  the  blow  of  his  adversary,  have 
been  dashed  to  the  earth  with  such  force  as  to  feel  the 
weight  of  his  foe,  and  unhorsed  twenty  times  he  must 
twenty  times  have  retrieved  his  failures,  more  set  than 
ever  on  the  combat.”  Unknown  to  England  before  the 
reign  of  Richard,  these  manly  sports  flourished  most  of 
all  in  France,  the  country  of  chivalry  and  feats  of  arms, 
and  for  several  years  we  follow  the  Marshal  from  combat 
to  combat  through  Normandy  and  Maine,  Champagne 


156  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

and  the  Ile-de-France,  so  that  his  renown  spread  from 
Poitou  to  the  Rhine.  At  one  period  in  his  life  he  tour- 
neyed every  fortnight.  The  tournaments  of  his  day, 
however,  were  not  the  elegant  and  fashionable  affairs  of 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  which  the  word  is 
apt  to  call  to  our  minds,  assemblages  of  beauty  as  well 
as  of  prowess,  held  in  special  enclosures  before  crowded 
galleries,  with  elaborate  rules  respecting  armor  and 
weapons  and  the  conditions  of  conflict.  On  the  contrary, 
they  were  fought  like  battles,  in  the  open,  with  all  the 
arms  and  methods  of  war  and  all  its  manoeuvres  and 
ferocity  of  attack ; indeed  they  differed  from  war  mainly 
in  being  voluntary  and  limited  to  a single  day.  After  one 
series  of  such  thunderous  encounters  the  Marshal  was 
found  in  a smithy,  his  head  on  the  anvil  and  the  smith 
working  with  hammer  and  pincers  to  remove  his  bat- 
tered helmet.  In  a great  tournament  at  Lagni  three 
thousand  knights  are  said  to  have  been  engaged,  of 
which  the  Young  King  furnished  eighty.  Knights 
fought  for  honor  and  fame  and  for  sheer  joy  of  combat; 
they  fought  also,  we  must  remember,  for  the  horses  and 
armor  and  ransoms  of  the  captives.  In  a Norman  tour- 
nament the  Marshal  captured  ten  knights  and  twelve 
horses.  Between  Pentecost  and  Lent  of  one  year  their 
clerks  calculated  that  he  and  his  companion  had  taken 
prisoners  three  hundred  knights,  without  counting 
horses  and  harness ; yet  he  seems  to  have  preserved  the 
golden  mean  between  the  careless  largesse  of  the  Young 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  157 

King  and  the  merely  mercenary  motives  of  the  large 
number  who  frequented  tournaments  for  the  sake  of 
gain. 

Concerning  the  great  agricultural  class  upon  which 
the  whole  social  system  rested,  our  information  is  of  a 
scattered  and  uneven  sort.  The  man  with  the  hoe  did 
not  interest  the  mediaeval  chronicler,  and  he  did  not 
gain  a voice  of  his  own  in  the  period  which  we  have  un- 
der review.  The  annals  of  the  time  are  indeed  careful  to 
record  the  drouths  and  floods,  the  seasons  of  plague,  pes- 
tilence, and  famine  of  which  Normandy  seems  to  have 
had  its  share,  but  they  tell  us  nothing  of  the  effects  of 
these  evils  upon  the  class  which  they  most  directly  con- 
cerned; while  the  charters,  leases,  and  manorial  records 
from  which  our  knowledge  of  the  peasants  must  be  built 
up  give  us  in  this  period  isolated  and  unrelated  facts. 
Moreover  our  information  is  confined  almost  entirely  to 
the  lands  of  churches  and  monasteries,  where  agriculture 
was  likely  to  be  more  progressive  because  of  their  closer 
relations  to  the  world  outside.  Normandy  was  a fertile 
country,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  its  agricultural 
population  fared  well  as  compared  with  that  of  other 
regions.  Certainly  there  is  here,  after  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, no  trace  of  serfdom  or  the  freeing  of  serfs,  and 
the  free  position  of  its  farming  class  distinguished  the 
duchy  from  most  of  the  lands  of  northern  France.  In 
other  respects  it  is  hard  to  discern  important  differences 


158  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

between  the  Norman  peasants  and  those  of  other  re- 
gions. After  the  suppression  of  an  insurrection  at  the 
beginning  of  this  century,  we  do  not  hear  of  any  general 
rising  of  the  Norman  peasants,  parallel  to  those  risings 
which  make  a sad  and  futile  chapter  in  the  annals  of 
many  parts  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was,  how- 
ever, a local  revolt  of  the  thirteenth  century  on  the 
lands  of  the  monks  of  Mont-Saint-Michel  that  brought 
out  one  of  the  best  descriptions  of  life  on  a Norman 
manor,  the  Conte  des  Vilains  de  Verson ,x  and,  while  it  is 
a bit  late  for  our  purpose,  it  is  confirmed  by  documen- 
tary evidence,  and  may  well  serve  as  an  illustration  of 
the  obligations  of  the  agricultural  class:  — 

In  June  the  peasants  must  cut  and  pile  the  hay  and  carry  it 
to  the  manor  house.  In  August  they  must  reap  and  carry  in 
the  convent's  grain;  their  own  grain  lies  exposed  to  wind  and 
rain  while  they  hunt  out  the  assessor  of  the  champart  and 
carry  his  share  to  his  barn.  On  the  Nativity  of  the  Virgin  the 
villain  owes  the  pork-due,  one  pig  in  eight;  at  St.  Denis’ 
day  the  cens;  at  Christmas  the  fowl,  fine  and  good,  and  there- 
after the  grain-due  of  two  sellers  of  barley  and  three  quarters 
of  wheat;  on  Palm  Sunday  the  sheep-due;  at  Easter  he  must 
plow,  sow  and  harrow.  When  there  is  building  the  tenant 
must  bring  stone  and  serve  the  masons;  he  must  also  haul  the 
convent’s  wood  for  two  denier s a day.  If  he  sells  his  land,  he 
owes  the  lord  a thirteenth  of  its  value;  if  he  marries  his 
daughter  outside  the  seigniory,  he  pays  a fine.  He  must  grind 
his  grain  at  the  seigniorial  mill  and  bake  his  bread  at  the 
seigniorial  oven,  where  the  customary  charges  do  not  satisfy 
the  attendants,  who  grumble  and  threaten  to  leave  his  bread 
unbaked. 

1 Printed  by  Delisle,  Etudes  sur  la  classe  agriccle,  pp.  668  ff. 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  159 

So  long  as  mediaeval  society  remained  almost  en- 
tirely agricultural  there  was  no  need  of  adapting  its 
organization  to  other  classes  than  those  which  have  just 
been  described.  In  course  of  time,  however,  the  growth 
of  industry  and  commerce,  very  slow  before  the  eleventh 
century,  but  rapid  and  constant  in  the  period  during 
and  after  the  Crusades,  as  may  be  seen  by  the  large 
number  of  markets  and  fairs  in  Normandy,  created  a 
new  class  of  dwellers  in  towns  who  demanded  recogni- 
tion of  their  peculiar  character  and  status.  By  reason  of 
the  nature  of  their  occupations  they  sought  release  from 
the  seigniorial  system,  with  its  forced  labor,  its  frequent 
payments,  and  its  vexatious  restrictions  upon  freedom  of 
movement  and  freedom  of  buying  and  selling;  and  as 
their  economic  needs  drew  them  together  into  industrial 
and  commercial  centres  of  population,  they  developed  a 
collective  feeling  and  demanded  collective  treatment. 
They  asked,  not,  as  has  sometimes  been  said,  for  the 
overthrow  of  the  feudal  system,  but  for  a place  within  it 
which  should  recognize  their  peculiar  economic  and 
political  interests;  and  the  result  of  their  efforts,  when 
fully  successful,  was  to  form  what  has  been  called  a col- 
lective seigniory,  standing  as  a body  in  the  relation  of 
vassal  to  lord  or  king,  and  owing  the  obligations  of  hom- 
age, fealty,  and  communal  military  service.  But  while 
not  anti-feudal  in  theory,  this  movement  was  often  anti- 
feudal  in  practice,  so  far  at  least  as  the  rights  and  priv- 
ileges of  the  immediate  overlord  were  concerned,  and  it 


i6o  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


led  to  friction  and  often  to  armed  contests  with  bishop, 
baron,  or  king.  In  Normandy,  significantly,  we  find 
none  of  those  communal  revolts  which  meet  us  through- 
out the  north  of  France  and  even  as  near  as  LeMans; 
the  towns  are  always  subject  to  the  ultimate  authority 
of  the  duke,  whose  domanial  rights  were  considerable 
even  in  the  episcopal  cities  and  who  favored  those  forms 
of  urban  development  which  strengthened  the  military 
resources  of  the  duchy.  The  early  history  of  the  Norman 
towns  is  one  of  the  most  obscure  chapters  in  Norman 
history,  but  it  indicates  a variety  of  influences  which  do 
not  fit  into  any  one  of  the  many  theories  of  municipal 
origins  which  have  been  the  subject  of  so  much  learned 
controversy.  Some  towns  were  originally  fortified 
places,  like  the  baronial  stronghold  of  Breteuil  or  Henry 
I’s  fortresses  of  Verneuil,  Nonancourt,  and  Pontorson 
on  the  southern  border.  Some  took  advantage  of  the 
protection  of  a monastery,  as  in  the  case  of  F£camp  or 
the  bourgs  of  the  abbot  and  abbess  of  Caen.  The  great 
ports,  like  Barfleur  and  Dieppe,  obviously  owed  their 
importance  to  trade,  and  it  was  trade  which  created  the 
prosperity  of  the  chief  towns  of  the  duchy,  Rouen  and 
Caen.  However  developed,  the  Norman  municipal  type 
exerted  no  small  influence  upon  urban  organization : the 
laws  of  Breteuil  became  the  model  for  Norman  founda- 
tions on  the  Welsh  border  and  in  Ireland;  the  Etablisse- 
ments  of  Rouen  were  copied  in  the  principal  towns  of 
western  France, — Tours  and  Poitiers,  Angoul&me  and 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  161 


La  Rochelle,  even  to  Gascon  Bayonne  on  the  Spanish 
frontier. 

If  we  take  as  an  illustration  of  this  development  the 
principal  Norman  town,  Rouen,  we  find  no  evidence 
regarding  its  institutions  before  the  twelfth  century, 
while  its  organization  as  a commune  dates  from  the 
reign  of  Henry  II  and  probably  from  the  year  1171.  The 
fundamental  law,  or  Etablissements,  which  Rouen  then 
received  and  which  became  the  model  for  communal 
government  elsewhere  in  Normandy,  constitutes  a body 
of  one  hundred  peers  who  meet  once  a fortnight  for  judi- 
cial and  other  business  and  who  choose  from  their  num- 
ber each  year  the  twelve  echevins,  or  magistrates,  and 
the  twelve  councillors  who  sit  with  the  Echevins  to  form 
the  council  of  juris.  Besides  these  boards,  which  are 
typical  of  mediaeval  town  constitutions,  the  peers  also 
nominate  three  candidates  for  the  office  of  mayor,  but 
the  choice  among  these  is  made  by  the  king,  and  the 
greater  authority  of  the  mayor  in  this  system  is  evi- 
dently designed  to  secure  more  effective  royal  control. 
It  is  the  mayorwho  leads  the  communal  militia,  receives 
the  revenues,  supervises  the  execution  of  sentences,  and 
presides  over  all  meetings  of  magistrates  and  boards. 
The  administration  of  justice  through  its  own  magis- 
trates is  perhaps  the  most  valued  privilege  of  the  com- 
mune, but  the  gravest  crimes  are  reserved  for  the  cog- 
nizance of  royal  officers,  and  the  presence  of  the  king  or 
a session  of  his  assize  is  sufficient  to  suspend  all  com- 


162  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


munal  powers  of  justice.  In  a state  like  the  Norman  the 
limits  of  municipal  self-government  are  clear. 

The  importance  of  Rouen  as  a commercial  and  indus- 
trial centre  was  not,  however,  dependent  upon  its  form 
of  government.  Its  ancient  gild  of  cordwainers  had  been 
recognized  by  Henry  I and  Stephen,  its  trading  privi- 
leges were  confirmed  in  one  of  the  earliest  charters  of 
Henry  II.  Save  for  a single  ship  yearly  from  Cherbourg, 
the  merchants  of  Rouen  had  a monopoly  of  trade  with 
Ireland ; in  England  they  could  go  through  all  the  mar- 
kets of  the  land ; in  London  they  were  quit  of  all  pay- 
ments save  for  wine  and  great  fish  and  had  exclusive 
rights  in  their  special  wharf  of  Dowgate.  Later  in 
Henry’s  reign  they  were  even  freed  of  all  dues  through- 
out his  dominions.  Only  a citizen  might  take  a ship- 
load of  merchandise  past  Rouen  or  bring  wine  to  a cellar 
in  the  town.  Besides  the  great  trade  in  wine  we  hear  of 
dealings  in  leather,  cloth,  grain,  and  especially  salt  and 
salt  fish.  Under  Henry  II  the  ducal  rights  over  the  town 
were  worth  annually  more  than  3,000  limes.  Apart 
from  their  share  in  this  general  prosperity,  the  citizens 
had  special  exemptions  in  the  matter  of  duties  and  tolls 
on  goods  which  they  brought  in,  while  the  freedom  from 
feudal  restraints  which  characterized  all  burgage  ten- 
ures put  a premium  upon  their  holding  of  property. 
Besides  the  privileged  areas  belonging  to  the  cathedral 
and  the  neighboring  abbeys,  a foothold  in  the  city  was 
valued  by  others:  the  bishop  of  Bayeux  had  a town 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  163 

house ; the  abbot  of  Caen  prized  a cellar  and  an  exemp- 
tion from  wine-dues  which  he  owed  to  the  generosity  of 
William  the  Conqueror;  the  clerks  and  chaplains  of  the 
king’s  household  took  advantage  of  their  opportunities 
to  acquire  rents  and  houses  at  Rouen,  as  well  as  at 
London  and  Winchester. 

Unfortunately  no  one  has  left  us  in  this  period  a de- 
scription of  the  busy  life  of  Rouen  such  as  Fitz  Stephen 
has  given  of  contemporary  London,  and  it  is  only  with 
the  imagination  that  we  can  bring  before  our  eyes  the 
ships  at  their  wharves  with  their  bales  of  marten-skins 
from  Ireland  and  casks  of  wine  from  Burgundy  and  the 
south,  the  fullers  and  dyers,  millers  and  tanners  plying 
their  trades  along  the  Eau  de  Robec,  the  burgesses 
trafficking  in  the  streets  and  the  cathedral  close,  the 
royal  clerks  and  serjeants  hastening  on  their  master’s 
business.  Still  more  to  be  regretted  is  the  disappearance 
of  those  material  remains  of  its  ancient  splendor  which 
until  the  last  century  retained  the  form  and  flavor,  if  not 
the  actual  wood  and  stone,  of  the  mediaeval  city.  To-day 
scarcely  anything  survives  above  ground  of  the  Rouen  of 
the  dukes  — of  its  walls  and  gates,  destroyed  by  Philip 
Augustus,  of  the  castle  by  the  river,  with  the  tower  from 
which  Henry  I threw  the  traitor  Conan  and  the  great 
hall  and  rooms  renewed  by  his  grandson,  of  the  stone 
bridge  of  the  Empress  Matilda,  of  the  royal  park  and 
palace  across  the  Seine  at  Quevilly.  Only  the  great  St. 
Romain’s  tower  of  the  cathedral  and  an  early  bit  of  the 


164  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

abbey-church  of  Saint-Ouen  still  body  forth  the  un- 
broken continuity  of  the  Norman  past. 

The  Norman  church  throughout  the  period  of  our 
study  stands  in  the  closest  relation  to  the  general  condi- 
tions of  Norman  society.  The  monasteries  and  churches 
of  the  region  had  been  almost  completely  wiped  out  by 
the  northern  invasions,  and  while  the  Northmen  soon 
adopted  the  religion  of  their  new  neighbors,  it  was 
many  years  before  ecclesiastical  life  and  discipline  again 
reached  the  level  of  the  other  dioceses  of  France.  As 
late  as  the  year  1001  a Burgundian  monk  reported  that 
there  was  hardly  a priest  in  Normandy  who  could  read 
the  lessons  or  say  his  psalms  correctly.  The  prelates  led 
the  life  of  the  great  feudal  families  of  which  they  were 
members,  distributing  the  property  of  the  church  as 
fiefs  to  their  friends  or  gifts  to  their  numerous  progeny; 
and  the  lower  clergy,  for  the  most  part  married,  sought 
to  pass  on  their  benefices  to  their  children.  In  the  course 
of  the  eleventh  century,  however,  more  canonical  stand- 
ards began  to  prevail,  largely  through  the  influence  of 
the  monks  of  Cluny.  Older  foundations  like  Fecamp 
were  renewed,  and  the  Norman  lords  soon  began  to  vie 
with  one  another  in  the  endowment  of  new  monastic 
establishments.  To  the  half-century  which  preceded  the 
Conquest  of  England  we  can  trace  the  beginnings  of 
twenty  important  monasteries  and  six  nunneries,  not 
counting  priories  and  smaller  foundations,  a movement 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  165 

for  which  contemporaries  could  find  no  parallel  short  of 
the  palmy  days  of  monasticism  in  Roman  Egypt.  In 
course  of  time  the  monastic  ideal  reacted  upon  the  secu- 
lar clergy,  and  the  monastic  schools  raised  the  level  of 
learning  throughout  the  duchy,  until  provincial  councils 
succeeded  in  establishing  the  celibacy  of  the  priesthood 
and  the  stricter  discipline  of  Rome.  In  all  this  move- 
ment for  reform  the  dukes  took  a leading  part,  inviting 
the  reformers  to  their  courts,  aiding  in  the  foundation 
and  restoration  of  cloisters,  and  lending  their  strong 
support  to  the  efforts  for  moral  improvement  in  the  sec- 
ular clergy.  They  also  asserted  their  supremacy  over 
the  Norman  church,  presiding  in  its  councils,  revising 
the  judgments  of  its  courts,  appointing  and  investing  its 
bishops  and  abbots.  Moreover,  while  ready  to  cooperate 
with  the  moral  ideas  of  the  Papacy,  they  resisted  all 
attempts  at  papal  interference  in  Norman  affairs.  When 
Alexander  II  sought  to  restore  an  abbot  whom  William 
the  Conqueror  had  deposed,  the  duke  replied  that  he 
would  gladly  receive  papal  legates  in  matters  of  faith 
and  doctrine,  but  would  hang  to  the  tallest  oak  of  the 
nearest  forest  any  monk  who  dared  to  resist  his  author- 
ity in  his  own  land.  William’s  resistance  was  equally 
firm  in  the  case  of  Gregory  VII,  who  failed  completely 
in  his  efforts  at  direct  action  in  William’s  dominions. 
Nowhere  on  the  Continent,  concludes  Bohmer,1  was 
there  at  this  time  a country  where  the  prince  and  his 
1 Kirche  und  Staat , p.  41. 


1 66  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


bishops  were  so  energetic  in  the  suppression  of  simony 
and  violations  of  clerical  vows ; nowhere  was  the  church 
so  completely  subject  to  the  secular  government. 

The  most  prominent  figure  in  the  Norman  church  of 
the  eleventh  century,  Odo,  for  nearly  fifty  years  bishop 
of  Bayeux,  was  far  from  fulfilling  the  stricter  ideal  of  a 
prelate’s  life.  Half-brother  of  the  Conqueror  through 
their  mother  Arlette,  he  received  the  bishopric  as  a fam- 
ily gift  at  the  tender  age  of  fourteen  and  became  thereby 
one  of  the  greatest  princes  of  Normandy.  His  hundred 
and  twenty  knights’  fees  furnished  him  a body  of  power- 
ful vassals;  his  demesne  gave  him  manors  and  forests  for 
the  support  of  his  household,  fuel  for  his  fires  and  reeds 
and  rushes  for  his  hall,  rents  and  tithes  at  Caen  and  the 
monopoly  of  the  mill  at  Bayeux,  tolls  and  fines  and 
market  rights  which  produced  a considerable  income  in 
ready  money.  For  the  invasion  of  England  he  is  said  to 
have  offered  a hundred  ships,  and  he  took  an  active  part 
in  the  battle  of  Hastings,  swinging  a huge  mace  in  place 
of  spear  and  sword,  since  the  shedding  of  blood  was  for- 
bidden to  an  ecclesiastic.  In  the  distribution  which  fol- 
lowed, Odo  received  large  estates  in  the  southeast,  as 
well  as  the  earldom  of  Kent  and  the  custody  of  Dover 
Castle,  and  he  seems  to  have  ruled  his  lands  with  a 
heavy  hand  both  as  earl  and  as  regent  in  William’s 
absence.  It  even  became  his  ambition  to  succeed  the 
mighty  Hildebrand  as  Pope,  and  he  had  already  spent 
considerable  sums  at  Rome  when  William,  accusing 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  167 

him  of  tyranny  and  oppression,  put  him  in  prison,  an- 
swering his  assertion  of  ecclesiastical  privilege  with  the 
statement  that  he  imprisoned,  not  the  bishop  of  Bayeux, 
but  the  earl  of  Kent.  There  he  languished  for  five  years 
till  William  on  his  death-bed,  against  his  better  judg- 
ment, released  him  for  ten  years  more  of  rule  in  Nor- 
mandy. Yet,  though  Odo’s  eulogists  admit  that  he  was 
given  overmuch  to  worldly  ambition,  the  lusts  of  the 
flesh  and  the  pride  of  life,  they  tell  us  of  his  vigorous 
defence  of  his  clergy  by  arms  as  well  as  by  eloquence,  of 
the  young  men  of  promise  whom  he  supported  in  the 
schools  of  Lorraine  and  other  centres  of  foreign  learning, 
of  the  journey  to  Jerusalem  on  which  he  met  his  death, 
of  the  great  cathedral  which  he  built  in  honor  of  the 
Mother  of  God  and  adorned  with  gold  and  silver  and 
probably  with  the  very  Bayeux  Tapestry  which  is  the 
chief  surviving  monument  of  his  magnificence. 

With  the  twelfth  century  the  type  changes.  To  the 
monastic  historian  a bishop  like  Philip  d’Harcourt,  like- 
wise of  the  see  of  Bayeux,  may  appear  wise  in  the  wis- 
dom of  this  world  which  is  foolishness  with  God,1  but  his 
wisdom  shows  itself  in  frequent  journeys  to  Rome  and 
persistent  litigation  in  the  duke’s  courts,  not  in  battles 
and  sieges,  and  he  owes  his  appointment  to  his  influence 
as  Stephen’s  chancellor  and  not  to  blood  relationship. 
Arnulf  of  Lisieux  is  another  royal  officer,  versatile,  in- 
sinuating, shifty,  anything  but  truthful  if  we  may  be- 
1 Robert  of  Torigni  (ed.  Delisle),  I,  p.  344. 


168  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


lieve  his  fellow-bishops,  but  proud  of  his  Latin  style  and 
his  knowledge  of  law  and  prodigal  of  letters  to  the  Pope. 
Their  contemporaries  continue  to  owe  their  promotion 
to  service  as  chaplains  or  chancellors  to  the  king,  but 
they  also  have  an  eye  toward  Rome  and  must  be  canon- 
ists as  well  as  secular  officials.  The  contrast  between 
Becket  the  king’s  chancellor  and  Becket  the  archbishop 
of  Canterbury  is  symptomatic  of  the  new  age,  although 
the  conflict  to  which  it  led  affected  Normandy  but  indi- 
rectly. Relations  with  the  lay  power  which  once  rested 
on  local  Norman  custom  come  to  be  formulated  in  the 
sharper  terms  of  the  canon  law  of  the  universal  church ; 
appeals  to  Rome  and  instructions  from  Rome  increase 
rapidly  in  volume  and  importance;  the  Norman  clergy 
attend  assemblies  of  the  clergy  of  neighboring  lands; 
and  by  the  end  of  the  Plantagenet  period  the  Norman 
church  is  ready  to  be  absorbed  into  the  church  of 
France. 

Respecting  the  daily  life  and  conversation  of  the  ca- 
thedral and  parish  clergy  the  twelfth  century  is  silent, 
save  for  the  condemnations  of  particular  evils  in  the 
councils  of  the  province.  From  the  middle  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  however,  Normandy  furnishes  us,  in  the 
diary  of  visitations  kept  by  the  archbishop  of  Rouen, 
Eudes  Rigaud,  a picture  of  manners  and  morals  which 
for  authenticity  and  fulness  of  detail  has  probably  no 
parallel  in  mediaeval  Europe;  and  one  is  tempted  to  carry 
back  two  or  three  generations  his  description  of  the 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  169 

canons  of  Rouen  wandering  about  the  cathedral  and 
chatting  with  women  during  service,  the  nuns  of  Saint- 
Sauveur  with  their  pet  dogs  and  squirrels,  and  those  of 
other  convents  celebrating  the  festival  of  the  Innocents 
with  dance  and  song  and  unseemly  mirth,  the  monks  of 
Bocherville  without  a Bible  among  them  to  read.  It  is 
hard  to  believe  that  there  was  anything  new  in  the  dis- 
orders which  this  upright  archbishop  chronicles  place  by 
place  and  year  by  year  — ignorance,  drunkenness,  and 
incontinence  among  the  parish  and  cathedral  clergy,  lax 
discipline,  loose  administration,  and  neglect  of  learning 
in  the  monasteries  and  nunneries.  What  was  old  in  the 
time  of  Rabelais  was  probably  old  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, and  there  is  abundant  evidence  of  abuses  in  the 
mediaeval  church,  in  Normandy  and  elsewhere.  What 
we  want  most  to  know  is  how  general  these  abuses  were 
and  how  many  there  were  to  counteract  them  like  Chau- 
cer’s ‘ povre  persoun  of  a toun,’  who  taught  “ Cristes  lore 
and  his  apostles  twelve,”  but  first  “folwed  it  himselve.” 
Data  of  this  sort  are  always  lacking  in  sufficient  amount 
for  any  moral  statistics,  and  they  must  be  supplemented 
and  interpreted  by  the  evidence  which  has  reached  us  of 
popular  piety  and  devotion.  Such  are  the  processions  of 
priest  and  people  throughout  the  diocese  to  the  cathe- 
drals at  Whitsuntide,  the  miraculous  cures  of  disease  by 
Our  Lady  of  Coutances,  and  the  extraordinary  burst  of 
contrition,  religious  enthusiasm,  and  zeal  for  good  works 
which  broke  forth  at  the  building  of  the  spires  of  Char- 


170  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

tres  in  1145  and  spread  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  Normandy.  Forming  associations  of  those 
who  confessed  their  sins,  received  penance,  and  recon- 
ciled themselves  with  their  enemies,  the  faithful  har- 
nessed themselves  to  carts  filled  with  stone,  timber, 
food,  and  whatever  might  help  the  churches  which  they 
sought  to  serve,  and  drew  them  long  miles  until  they 
seemed  to  fulfill  the  saying  of  the  prophet,  “the  spirit 
of  the  living  creature  was  in  the  wheels.”  The  abbot  of 
Saint- Pierre-sur-Dives,  to  whom  we  owe  our  fullest  ac- 
count of  the  movement,  tells  us  of  these  processions: 1 

When  they  halt  on  the  road,  nothing  is  heard  but  the  con- 
fession of  sins  and  pure  and  suppliant  prayer  to  God  to  obtain 
pardon.  At  the  voice  of  the  priests  preaching  peace  hatred  is 
forgotten,  discord  thrown  aside,  debts  are  remitted,  the  unity 
of  hearts  is  established.  But  if  any  one  is  so  far  advanced  in 
evil  as  to  be  unwilling  to  pardon  an  offender  or  obey  the  pious 
admonition  of  the  priest,  his  offering  is  instantly  thrown  from 
the  wagon  as  impure,  and  he  himself  is  ignominiously  and 
shamefully  excluded  from  the  society  of  the  holy.  There,  as  a 
result  of  the  prayers  of  the  faithful,  one  may  see  the  sick  and 
infirm  rise  whole  from  their  wagons,  the  dumb  open  their 
mouths  to  the  praise  of  God,  the  possessed  recover  a sane 
mind.  The  priests  who  preside  over  each  wagon  are  seen 
exhorting  all  to  repentance,  confession,  lamentations,  and  the 
resolution  of  a better  life,  while  old  and  young  and  even  little 
children,  prostrate  on  the  ground,  call  on  the  Mother  of  God 
and  utter  to  her,  from  the  depth  of  their  hearts,  sobs  a.xd 
sighs,  with  words  of  confession  and  praise.  . . . After  the 
faithful  resume  their  march  to  the  sound  of  trumpets  and  the 

1 The  text  is  printed  in  the  Bibliotheque  de  VlLcole  des  Chartes , xxi, 
pp.  1^0  ff. 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  171 

display  of  banners,  the  journey  is  so  easy  that  no  obstacle  can 
retard  it.  . . . When  they  have  reached  the  church,  they  ar- 
range the  wagons  about  it  like  a spiritual  camp,  and  during 
the  whole  of  the  following  night  the  army  of  the  Lord  keeps 
watch  with  psalms  and  canticles,  tapers  and  lamps  are  lighted 
on  each  wagon,  and  the  relics  of  the  saints  are  brought  for  the 
relief  of  the  sick  and  the  weak,  for  whom  priests  and  people  in 
procession  implore  the  clemency  of  the  Lord  and  his  Blessed 
Mother.  If  healing  does  not  follow  at  once,  they  cast  aside 
their  garments,  men  and  women  alike,  and  drag  themselves 
from  altar  to  altar  . . . begging  the  priests  to  scourge  them 
for  their  sins. 

At  the  close  of  the  Angevin  period  there  were  in  Nor- 
mandy something  like  eighty  monasteries  and  convents, 
not  counting  the  numerous  cells  and  priories,  as,  for  ex- 
ample, the  various  dependencies  of  the  great  abbey  of 
Marmoutier  at  Tours.  These  were  chiefly  Benedictine 
foundations,  though  the  newer  movements  of  the  Cister- 
cians, Premonstratensians,  and  Augustinians  were  well 
represented,  the  only  distinctively  Norman  order,  the 
Congregation  of  Savigny,  having  been  early  absorbed 
by  the  Cistercians.  The  oldest  of  these  establishments 
were  at  the  two  extremes  of  the  duchy,  Mont-Saint- 
Michel  at  one  end  and  Jumieges,  Saint- Wandrille,  Saint- 
Ouen  and  F4camp  at  the  other;  but  the  distribution  was 
speedily  equalized,  and  the  great  abbeys  of  the  centre, 
Bee  and  Caen  and  Saint-Evroul,  were  soon  known 
throughout  Europe.  The  conquest  of  England  opened  a 
new  field  for  monastic  influence:  twenty  Norman  mon- 
asteries had  received  lands  in  England  by  the  time  of  the 


172  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Domesday  survey,  and  the  number  was  considerably 
greater  when  the  holdings  of  alien  priories  were  confis- 
cated at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Mont- 
Saint-Michel,  for  example,  had  a priory  in  Cornwall  as 
well  as  one  at  LeMans,  and  its  lands  in  Maine,  Brit- 
tany, and  various  parts  of  England  did  not  allay  its 
desire  for  more  whenever  opportunity  offered.  For  a pe- 
riod of  five  years,  from  1155  to  1159  inclusive,  we  have 
a record  of  the  activity  of  its  abbot,  Robert  of  Torigni, 
in  relation  to  the  monastery’s  property,  and  a very  in- 
structive record  it  is.  It  takes  him  to  England  and  the 
Channel  Islands,  to  the  king’s  assizes  at  Gavrai,  Dom- 
front,  Caen,  and  Carentan,  to  the  courts  of  the  bishops 
of  Avranches,  Coutances,  and  Bayeux,  and  to  that  of  the 
archbishop  at  Rouen ; proving  his  rights,  compromising, 
exchanging,  purchasing,  receiving  by  gift  or  royal  char- 
ter; picking  up  here  a bit  of  land,  there  a mill,  a garden, 
a vineyard,  a tithe,  a church,  to  add  to  the  lands  and 
rents,  mills  and  forests,  markets  and  churches  and  feudal 
rights  which  he  already  possessed.  There  are  also  vari- 
ous examples  of  loans  on  mortgage,  for  the  monasteries 
were  the  chief  source  of  rural  credit  in  this  period,  and 
as  the  land  with  its  revenues  passed  at  once  into  the 
possession  of  the  mortgagee,  the  security  was  absolute, 
the  annual  return  sure,  and  the  chances  of  ultimate 
acquisition  of  the  property  considerable.  With  the 
resources  of  the  monastery  during  his  administration  of 
thirty-two  years  Abbot  Robert  was  able  to  increase  the 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  173 

number  of  monks  from  forty  to  sixty,  to  enlarge  the 
conventual  buildings,  in  which  he  entertained  the  kings 
of  England  and  of  France,  and  to  add  a great  fagade 
to  the  abbey-church,  a contribution  to  the  massive  pile 
of  the  Marvel  which  we  are  no  longer  privileged  to 
behold.  He  also  labored  for  the  intellectual  side  of  the 
monastery’s  life,  restoring  the  library  and  enlarging 
it  by  a hundred  and  twenty  volumes,  and  composing 
a variety  of  works  on  historical  subjects  which  make 
him  the  chief  authority  for  half  a century  of  Norman 
history. 

There  is,  however,  not  much  concerning  monasteries 
in  Robert’s  chronicle,  and  even  his  special  essay  on  the 
history  of  the  Norman  abbeys  is  confined  to  externals. 
Perhaps  he  was  cumbered  about  much  serving;  more 
probably  he  saw  nothing  worthy  of  the  historian’s  pen 
in  the  inner  life  of  the  institution.  When  the  abbot  had 
a new  altar  dedicated  or  renewed  the  reliquaries  of  St. 
Aubert  and  St.  Lawrence,  that  was  worth  setting  down, 
but  the  daily  routine  of  observance  was  the  same  at 
Mont-Saint-Michel  as  in  the  other  Benedictine  foun- 
dations, and  has  remained  substantially  unchanged 
through  the  centuries  of  monastic  history.  At  any  rate 
no  monkish  Boswell  has  done  for  Normandy  what  Joce- 
lin  of  Brakelonde  did  for  contemporary  England  in  that 
vivid  picture  of  life  at  Bury  St.  Edmund’s  which  Carlyle 
has  made  familiar  in  his  Past  and  Present.  A monk  of 
Saint-Evroul,  it  is  true,  did  a much  greater  thing  in  the 


174  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Historia  Ecclesiastica  of  Ordericus  Vitalis,  but  he  was  an 
historian,  not  a Boswell,  and  his  experience  of  half  a 
century  of  monastic  life  lies  embedded  deep  in  the  five 
solid  volumes  of  this  wide-ranging  work.  One  phase  of 
the  religious  life  of  mediaeval  monasteries  is  admirably 
illustrated  in  Normandy,  namely  the  mortuary  rolls  of 
the  members  and  heads  of  religious  houses.  It  early 
became  the  custom,  not  only  to  say  prayers  regularly 
for  the  departed  members  and  benefactors  of  such  a 
community,  but  to  seek  the  suffrages  of  associated  com- 
munities or  of  all  the  faithful.  To  that  end  an  encyclical 
was  prepared  setting  forth  the  virtues  of  the  deceased 
and  was  carried  by  a special  messenger  from  convent 
to  convent,  each  establishment  indicating  the  prayers 
which  had  there  been  said  and  adding  the  names  of  the 
brothers  for  whom  prayers  were  solicited  in  return.  The 
two  most  considerable  documents  of  this  sort  which 
have  come  down  to  us  are  of  Norman  origin,  the  roll  of 
Matilda,  the  first  abbess  of  Holy  Trinity  at  Caen,  and 
that  of  Vitalis,  founder  of  the  Congregation  of  Savigny, 
which  belongs  to  the  year  1122  and  is  the  oldest  manu- 
script of  this  type  extant  in  its  original  form,  with  all  the 
quaint  local  varieties  in  execution.  Each  of  these  was 
carried  throughout  the  greater  part  of  England  and  of 
northern  and  central  France,  reaching  in  the  first  case 
two  hundred  and  fifty-three  different  monasteries  and 
churches,  in  the  second  two  hundred  and  eight,  and  as 
the  replies  were  often  made  at  some  length  in  prose  or 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  175 

verse,  they  constitute  a curious  monument  of  the  con- 
dition of  culture  in  the  places  visited. 

If  the  impulse  toward  religious  reform  in  Normandy 
was  of  Burgundian  origin,  intellectual  stimulus  came 
chiefly  from  Italy.  The  two  principal  figures  in  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  duchy  in  the  eleventh  century,  Lan- 
franc  and  Anselm,  were  Italians:  Lanfranc  distinguished 
for  his  mastery  of  law,  Lombard,  Roman,  and  canon, 
for  the  great  school  which  he  founded  at  Bee,  and  for  his 
labors  in  the  field  of  ecclesiastical  statesmanship;  An- 
selm his  pupil  and  his  successor  as  prior  of  Bee  and  as 
archbishop  of  Canterbury,  remarkable  as  a teacher,  still 
more  remarkable  as  one  of  the  foremost  theologians  of 
the  Western  Church.  “Under  the  first  six  dukes,”  we 
are  told,  “there  was  hardly  any  one  in  Normandy  who 
gave  himself  to  liberal  studies,  and  there  was  no  master 
till  God,  who  provides  for  all,  sent  Lanfranc  to  these 
shores.”  Teaching  first  at  Avranches,  Lanfranc  estab- 
lished himself  at  Bee  in  1042,  and  his  school  soon  drew 
students  from  the  remotest  parts  of  France  and  sent 
them  out  in  all  directions  to  positions  of  honor  and  in- 
fluence. Abbots  like  Gilbert  Crispin  of  Westminster, 
bishops  like  St.  Ives  of  Chartres,  primates  of  Rouen  and 
Canterbury,  even  a pope  in  the  person  of  Alexander  II, 
figure  on  the  long  honor-roll  of  Lanfranc’s  pupils  at 
Bee.  For  an  institution  of  such  renown,  however,  we 
know  singularly  little  concerning  the  actual  course  and 


176  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

methods  of  study  at  Bee,  and  its  historian  is  compelled 
to  fall  back  upon  a general  description  of  the  trivium  and 
quadrivium  which  made  up  the  ordinary  monastic  cur- 
riculum. We  do  not  even  know  whether  Lanfranc  actu- 
ally taught  the  subject  of  law  of  which  he  was  past  mas- 
ter, though  we  can  be  sure  that  theology  and  philosophy 
had  a large  place  under  Anselm,  and  that  the  school 
must  have  felt  the  influence  of  the  large  part  which  its 
leaders  took  in  the  theological  discussions  of  their  time. 
An  important  form  of  activity  in  the  monasteries  of  the 
period  was  the  copying  of  manuscripts,  a sure  safeguard 
against  that  idleness  which  St.  Benedict  declared  the 
enemy  of  the  soul.  Lanfranc  sat  up  a good  part  of  the 
night  correcting  the  daily  copies  of  the  monks  of  Bee; 
the  first  abbot  of  Saint- Evroul  had  an  edifying  tale  of  an 
erring  brother  who  had  secured  his  salvation  by  volun- 
tarily copying  a holy  book  of  such  dimensions  that  the 
angels  who  produced  it  on  his  behalf  at  the  judgment 
were  able  to  check  it  off  letter  by  letter  against  his  sins 
and  leave  at  the  end  a single  letter  in  his  favor!  The 
monks  of  Saint-Evroul  prided  themselves  on  their  Latin 
style,  especially  their  Latin  verse,  and  on  their  chants 
which  were  sung  even  in  distant  Calabria;  yet  the  best 
example  of  their  training,  the  historian  Ordericus,  freely 
admits  the  literary  supremacy  of  Bee,  “where  almost 
every  one  seems  to  be  a philosopher  and  even  the  un- 
learned have  something  to  teach  the  frothy  gramma- 
»» 


nans. 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  177 

In  the  course  of  the  twelfth  century  the  leadership  in 
learning  passes  from  the  regular  to  the  secular  clergy, 
and  the  monastic  schools  decline  before  the  cathedral 
schools  of  Laon,  Tours,  Chartres,  Orleans,  and  Paris, 
two  of  which,  Paris  and  Orleans,  soon  break  the  bounds 
of  the  older  curriculum  and  develop  into  universities. 
As  the  current  of  scholars  sets  toward  these  new  centres, 
Normandy  is  left  at  one  side;  no  longer  a leader,  its 
students  must  learn  their  theology  and  philosophy  at 
Paris,  their  law  at  Orleans  and  Bologna,  their  medicine 
at  Salerno  and  Montpellier.  The  principal  Norman  phi- 
losopher of  the  new  age,  William  of  Conches,  the  tutor 
of  Henry  II,  is  associated  with  Paris  rather  than  with 
the  schools  of  Normandy.  Perhaps  the  most  original 
work  of  the  pioneer  of  the  new  science,  the  Questiones 
naturales  of  Adelard  of  Bath,  is  dedicated  to  a Norman 
bishop,  Richard  of  Bayeux,  but  its  author  was  not  a 
Norman,  nor  do  we  find  Norman  names  among  those 
who  drank  deep  at  the  new  founts  of  Spain  and  Sicily. 

For  a measure  of  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  Nor- 
man monasteries  and  cathedrals  nothing  could  serve 
better  than  an  examination  of  the  contents  of  their 
libraries,  where  we  might  judge  for  ourselves  what  books 
they  acquired  and  copied  and  read.  This  unfortunately 
we  can  no  longer  make.  The  library  of  Bee,  partly  de- 
stroyed by  fire  in  the  seventeenth  century,  was  scat- 
tered to  the  four  winds  of  heaven  in  the  eighteenth,  and 
while  the  legislation  of  1791  provided  for  the  transfer  of 


178  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

such  collections  to  the  public  depositories  of  the  neigh- 
boring towns,  the  libraries  of  Avranches,  Alengon,  and 
Rouen,  reenforced  by  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale,  have 
garnered  but  a small  part  of  the  ancient  treasures  of 
Mont-Saint- Michel,  Saint-Evroul,  and  the  establish- 
ments of  the  lower  Seine.  Works  of  importance  as  well 
as  curiosities  still  survive  — autograph  corrections  of 
Lanfranc,  the  originals  of  the  great  histories  of  Robert 
of  Torigni  and  Ordericus  Vitalis,  service-books  throwing 
light  on  the  origins  of  the  liturgical  drama,  cartularies  of 
churches  and  abbeys,  — but  for  a more  comprehensive 
view  of  the  resources  of  the  twelfth  century  we  must 
turn  to  the  contemporary  catalogues  which  have  come 
down  to  us  from  the  cloisters  of  Saint-Evroul,  Bee,  Lire, 
and  Fecamp,  and  the  cathedral  of  Rouen.  After  all,  as 
that  delightful  academician  Silvestre  Bonnard  has  re- 
minded us,  there  is  no  reading  so  easy,  so  restful,  or  so 
seductive  as  a catalogue  of  manuscripts ; and  there  is  no 
better  guide  to  the  silence  and  the  peace  of  the  monastic 
library,  as  one  may  still  taste  them  in  the  quiet  of  the 
Escorial  or  Monte  Cassino.  Let  us  take  the  most  specific 
example,  the  collection  of  one  hundred  and  forty  vol- 
umes bequeathed  to  Bee  by  Philip,  bishop  of  Bayeux,  at 
his  death  in  1164,  or  rather  the  one  hundred  and  thir- 
teen which  reached  the  monastery,  twenty-seven  having 
fallen  by  the  way  and  being  hence  omitted  from  the 
catalogue.  Like  the  other  libraries  of  the  time,  this  con- 
sisted chiefly  of  theology  — the  writings  of  the  Fathers 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  179 

and  of  the  Carolingian  and  post-Carolingian  commenta- 
tors and  theologians,  ending  with  Philip’s  contempo- 
raries, St.  Bernard,  Gilbert  de  la  Porr6e,  Hildebert  of 
Tours,  and  Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  and  his  metropolitan, 
Hugh  of  Amiens.  Wise  in  the  wisdom  of  this  world,  the 
bishop  possessed  the  whole  Corpus  Juris  Civilis  in  five 
volumes,  as  well  as  the  leading  authorities  on  canon 
law,  Burchard,  St.  Ives,  and  the  Decretum  of  Gratian. 
He  had  none  of  the  Roman  poets,  although  they  were 
not  unknown  to  Norman  writers  of  his  age,  but  a fair 
selection  of  prose  works  of  a literary  and  philosophi- 
cal character  — Cicero  and  Quintilian,  Seneca  and  the 
Younger  Pliny,  besides  the  mediaeval  version  of  Plato’s 
Timceus.  There  is  a goodly  sprinkling  of  the  Roman 
historians  most  in  vogue  in  the  Middle  Ages,  Caesar, 
Suetonius,  Valerius  Maximus,  Florus,  Eutropius,  and 
the  Latin  version  of  Josephus,  besides  such  of  their 
mediaeval  successors  as  came  nearest  to  Anglo-Norman 
affairs.  Science  was  confined  to  Pliny’s  Natural  History 
and  two  anonymous  treatises  on  mathematics  and  as- 
tronomy, while  the  practical  arts  were  represented  by 
Palladius  on  agriculture  and  Vegetius  on  tactics.  On  the 
whole  a typically  Norman  library,  deficient  on  the  imag- 
inative side,  but  strong  in  orthodox  theology,  in  law,  and 
in  history;  not  in  all  respects  an  up-to-date  collection, 
since  it  contained  none  of  those  logical  works  of  Aristotle 
which  were  transforming  European  thought,  and,  save 
for  a treatise  of  Adelard  of  Bath,  showed  no  recognizable 


i8o  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


trace  of  the  new  science  which  was  beginning  to  come  in 
through  Spain;  strikingly  lacking  also,  save  for  a volume 
on  Norman  history,  in  products  of  Normandy  itself, 
even  in  the  field  of  theology  and  scriptural  interpreta- 
tion, where,  for  example,  Richard  abbot  of  Pr6aux  had 
written  marvellous  commentaries  upon  Genesis,  Deu- 
teronomy, Ecclesiastes,  the  Song  of  Songs,  and  the 
Proverbs  of  Solomon,  and  had  “discoursed  allegorically 
or  tropologically  in  many  treatises  upon  obscure  prob- 
lems of  the  Prophets.”  1 

After  all,  works  on  the  history  of  Normandy  were  the 
most  Norman  thing  a Norman  could  produce,  and  it 
was  in  this  field  that  the  duchy  made  its  chief  contribu- 
tion to  mediaeval  literature  and  learning.  All  the  usual 
types  appear,  local  annals,  lists  of  bishops  and  abbots, 
lives  of  saints,  biographies  of  princes,  but  the  most 
characteristic  are  the  works  in  which  the  history  of 
Normandy  is  grasped  as  a whole:  the  half-legendary 
account  of  the  early  dukes  by  Dudo  of  Saint-Quentin, 
the  confused  but  valuable  Gesta  of  William  of  Jumieges, 
at  last  restored  to  us  in  a critical  edition,2  the  Chronicle 
of  Robert  of  Torigni,  and  especially  the  great  Historia 
Ecclesiastica  of  Ordericus  Vitalis,  the  chef-d’ceuvre  of 
No’.man  historiography  and  the  most  important  his- 
torical work  written  in  France  in  the  twelfth  century. 

Born  in  1075  near  Shrewsbury,  Ordericus  was  early 

* Ordericus  Vitalis  (ed.  LePrevost),  ill,  p.  431. 

* Guillaume  de  Jumieges,  Gesta  Normannorum  Ducum  (ed.  Marx), 

de  l’Histoire  de  Normandie,  1914. 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  181 


devoted  to  the  monastic  life,  and  lest  family  affection 
might  interfere  with  his  vocation  and  the  sure  hope  of 
Paradise  held  out  to  the  sobbing  boy,  his  sorrowing 
parents  sent  him  forever  from  their  sight  to  spend  his 
days  at  Saint- Evroul  near  the  southern  border  of  Nor- 
mandy. Tonsured  at  ten,  ordained  a deacon  at  eighteen 
and  a priest  at  thirty-two,  he  bore  the  burden  and  heat 
of  the  day  under  six  successive  abbots,  until  as  an  old 
man  of  sixty-six  he  laid  down  his  pen  with  a touching 
peroration  of  prayer  and  thanksgiving  to  Him  who  had 
disposed  these  years  according  to  His  good  pleasure. 
During  this  half  century  of  poverty  and  obedience  Or- 
dericus  had  little  opportunity  to  leave  the  precincts  of 
the  monastery,  although  on  rare  occasions  we  can  trace 
him  in  England  and  at  Cambrai,  Rheims,  and  Cluni, 
and  the  materials  of  his  history  had  to  be  gathered  al- 
most wholly  from  the  well-stocked  library  of  the  abbey 
and  from  conversation  with  those  who  passed  his  way. 
These  facilities  were,  however,  considerable,  for,  remote 
as  Saint-Evroul  may  seem  in  its  corner  of  the  pays 
d’Ouche,  it  was  in  constant  relations  with  England, 
where  it  possessed  lands,  and  with  southern  Italy, 
whither  it  had  sent  its  members  to  found  new  convents; 
and  like  all  such  establishments  it  was  a place  of  enter- 
tainment for  travellers  of  all  classes,  priests  and  monks, 
knights  and  jongleurs,  even  a king  like  Henry  I,  who 
brought  with  them  accounts  of  their  journeys  about  the 
world  and  tales  of  great  deeds  in  distant  Spain,  Sicily, 


182  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


and  Jerusalem.  There  were  few  better  places  to  collect 
materials  for  the  writing  of  history,  and  there  was  no 
one  who  could  make  better  use  of  them  than  Ordericus. 
He  was  fully  launched  in  his  great  work  by  1123,  and  he 
kept  at  it  throughout  the  remaining  eighteen  years  of 
his  life,  putting  it  aside  in  the  winter  when  his  fingers 
grew  numb  with  the  cold,  but  resuming  it  each  spring 
in  the  clear  round  hand  which  meets  us  in  many  a manu- 
script of  Saint-Evroul,  and  offering  it  at  the  end  to  fu- 
ture generations,  a monument  more  lasting  than  the 
granite  obelisk  erected  to  his  memory  in  1912.  His 
original  purpose  was  limited  to  a history  of  his  monas- 
tery, but  the  plan  soon  widened  to  include  the  principal 
movements  of  his  time  and  finally  grew  to  the  idea  of  a 
universal  history,  beginning,  indeed,  with  the  Christian 
era  instead  of  with  the  more  usual  starting-point  of  the 
Creation.  Nevertheless,  even  in  its  final  form  the  work 
of  Ordericus  is  not  a general  history  of  the  Christian 
centuries,  for  the  general  portion  is  chiefly  introductory 
and  comparatively  brief;  his  real  theme  is  Norman  his- 
tory, centring,  of  course,  round  the  vicissitudes  of  his 
convent  and  the  adjacent  territory,  but  also  giving  a 
large  place  to  the  deeds  of  the  Normans  in  that  greater 
Normandy  which  they  had  created  beyond  the  sea,  in 
England,  in  Italy,  and  in  Palestine.  He  is  thus  not  only 
Norman  but  pan-Norman.  The  plan,  or  rather  lack  of 
plan,  of  his  thirteen  books  reflects  the  changes  of  design 
and  the  interruptions  which  the  work  underwent;  there 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  183 

is  some  repetition,  much  confusion,  and  a distinct  ab- 
sence of  architectonic  art.  These  defects,  however,  do 
not  diminish  the  prime  merit  of  the  work,  which  lies  in 
its  replacement  of  the  jejune  annals  of  the  older  type  by 
a full  and  ample  historical  narrative,  rich  in  detail, 
vivid  in  presentation,  giving  space  to  literary  history 
and  everyday  life  as  well  as  to  the  affairs  of  church  and 
state,  and  constituting  as  a whole  the  most  faithful  and 
living  picture  which  has  reached  us  of  the  European 
society  of  his  age.  Neither  in  the  world  nor  of  the  world, 
this  monk  had  a ripe  knowledge  of  men  and  affairs,  in- 
dependence of  judgment,  a feeling  for  personality,  and 
a sure  touch  in  characterization.  He  had  also  a Latin 
style  of  his  own,  labored  at  times  rather  than  affected, 
ready  to  show  its  skill  in  well-turned  verse  or  in  well- 
rounded  speeches  after  the  fashion  of  the  classical  his- 
torians, but  direct  and  vigorous  and  not  unworthy  of 
the  flexible  and  sonorous  language  which  he  had  made 
his  own. 

Latin,  however,  was  an  exclusive  possession  of  the 
clergy,  — and  not  of  all  of  them,  if  we  can  argue  from 
the  examinations  held  by  Eudes  Rigaud,  — and  by  the 
middle  of  the  twelfth  century  the  Norman  baronage 
began  to  demand  from  the  clerks  an  account  of  the 
Anglo-Norman  past  in  a language  which  they  too  could 
understand.  History  in  the  vernacular  develops  in 
France  earlier  than  elsewhere,  and  in  France  earliest  in 
Normandy  and  in  the  English  lands  which  shared  the 


184  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Norman  speech  and  produced  the  oldest  surviving 
example  of  such  a work,  the  Histoire  des  Engles  of  Gai- 
mar,  written  between  1147  and  1151.  The  chief  centre 
for  the  production  of  vernacular  history  was  the  court 
of  that  patron  of  ecclesiastical  and  secular  learning, 
Henry  II,  and  his  Aquitanian  queen,  to  one  or  both  of 
whom  are  dedicated  the  histories  of  Wace  and  Benoit 
de  Sainte-More.  Wace,  the  most  interesting  of  this 
group  of  writers,  was  a native  of  Jersey  and  a clerk  of 
Caen  who  turned  an  honest  penny  by  his  compositions 
and  won  a canonry  at  Bayeux  by  the  most  important  of 
them,  his  Roman  de  Ron.  Beginning  with  Rollo,  from 
whom  it  takes  its  name,  this  follows  the  course  of 
Norman  history  to  the  victory  of  Henry  I in  1106,  in 
simple  and  agreeable  French  verse  based  upon  the 
Latin  chroniclers  but  incorporating  something  from 
popular  tradition.  Such  a compilation  adds  little  to  our 
knowledge,  but  by  the  time  of  the  Third  Crusade  we 
find  a contemporary  narrative  in  French  verse  prepared 
by  a jongleur  of  fivreux  who  accompanied  Richard  on 
the  expedition.  If  we  ignore  the  line,  at  best  very  faint, 
which  in  works  of  this  sort  separates  history  from 
romance  and  from  works  of  edification,  we  must  carry 
the  Norman  pioneers  still  further  back,  to  the  Vie  de 
Saint  Alexis  which  we  owe  probably  to  a canon  of 
Rouen  in  the  eleventh  century,  and  to  the  great  national 
epic  of  mediaeval  France,  the  Chanson  de  Roland,  pre- 
Norman  in  origin  but  Norman  in  its  early  form,  which 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  185 

has  recently  been  ascribed  to  Turold,  bishop  of  Bayeux 
after  the  death  of  the  more  famous  Odo  and  later  for 
many  years  a monk  of  Bee.  There  is,  one  may  object, 
nothing  monastic  in  this  wonderful  paean  of  mediaeval 
knighthood,  whose  religion  is  that  of  the  God  of  battles 
who  has  never  lied,  and  whose  hero  meets  death  with 
his  face  toward  Spain  and  his  imperishable  sword  be- 
neath him;  but  knights  and  monks  had  more  in  common 
than  was  once  supposed,  and  we  are  coming  to  see  that 
the  monasteries,  especially  the  monasteries  of  the  great 
highways,  had  a large  share  in  the  making,  if  not  in  the 
final  writing,  of  the  mediaeval  epic  as  well  as  the  medi- 
aeval chronicles. 

When  we  reach  works  like  these,  the  literary  history 
of  Normandy  merges  in  that  of  France,  as  well  as  in 
that  of  England,  which,  thanks  to  the  Norman  Con- 
quest and  the  Norman  empire,  long  remained  a literary 
province  of  France.  We  must  not,  however,  leave  this 
vernacular  literature,  as  yet  almost  wholly  the  work  of 
clerks,  with  the  impression  that  its  dominant  quality  is 
romantic  or  poetical.  Its  versified  form  was  merely  the 
habit  of  an  age  which  found  verse  easy  to  remember; 
the  literature  itself,  as  Gaston  Paris  has  well  observed,1 
was  “essentially  a literature  of  instruction  for  the  use 
of  laymen,”  fit  material  for  prose  and  not  for  poetry. 
It  is  thus  characteristically  Norman  in  subject  as  well  as 
in  speech  — simple  and  severe  in  form,  devout  and 
1 La  litter ature  normande  avant  V annexion,  p.  22. 


186  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


edifying  rather  than  mystical,  given  to  history  rather 
than  to  speculation,  and  seeking  through  the  moralized 
science  of  lapidaries  and  bestiaries  and  astronomical 
manuals  to  aid  the  everyday  life  of  a serious  and  practi- 
cal people. 

Normandy  had  also  something  to  say  to  the  world  in 
that  most  mediaeval  of  arts,  architecture,  and  especially 
in  that  Romanesque  form  of  building  which  flourished 
in  the  eleventh  century  and  the  first  half  of  the  twelfth. 
The  great  Norman  churches  of  this  epoch  were  the 
natural  outgrowth  of  its  life  — the  wealth  of  the  ab- 
beys, the  splendor  of  princely  prelates  like  Odo  of  Bay- 
eux  and  Geoffrey  of  Coutances,  the  piety  and  penance 
of  William  the  Conqueror  and  Matilda,  expiating  by 
two  abbeys  their  marriage  within  the  prohibited  de- 
grees, the  religious  devotion  of  the  people  as  illustrated 
by  the  processions  of  1145.  The  biographer  of  Geoffrey 
de  Mowbray,  for  example,  tells 1 us  how  the  bishop  la- 
bored day  and  night  for  the  enlargement  and  beautifi- 
cation of  his  church  at  Coutances  (dedicated  in  1056), 
buying  the  better  half  of  the  city  from  the  duke  to  get 
space  for  the  cathedral  and  palace,  travelling  as  far  as 
Apulia  to  secure  gold  and  gems  and  vestments  from 
Robert  Guiscard  and  his  fellow  Normans,  and  main- 
taining from  his  rents  a force  of  sculptors,  masons, 

1 Gallia  Christiana , xi,  instr.,  coll.  219-23;  Mortet,  Recueil  de  textes 
relatifs  d Vhistoire  de  V architecture  (Paris,  1911),  pp.  71-75. 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  187 

goldsmiths,  and  workers  in  glass.  Nearly  forty  years 
later,  when  the  church  had  been  damaged  by  earth- 
quake and  tempest,  he  brought  a plumber  from  England 
to  restore  the  leaden  roof  and  the  fallen  stones  of  the 
towers  and  to  replace  the  gilded  cock  which  crowned 
the  whole ; and  when  he  saw  the  cock  once  more  glisten- 
ing at  the  summit,  he  gave  thanks  to  God  and  shortly 
passed  away,  pronouncing  eternal  maledictions  upon 
those  who  should  injure  his  church.  Of  this  famous 
structure  nothing  now  remains  above  the  ground,  for 
the  noble  towers  which  look  from  the  hill  of  Coutances 
toward  the  western  sea  are  Gothic,  like  the  rest  of  the 
church;  and  for  surviving  monuments  of  cathedrals  of 
the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  we  must  go  to  the 
naves  of  Bayeux  and  Evreux  and  the  St.  Ro main’s  tower 
of  Rouen.  Even  here  the  impression  will  be  fragmen- 
tary, broken  by  Gothic  choirs  and  by  towers  and  spires 
of  a still  later  age,  just  as  the  simple  lines  of  the  early 
church  of  Mont-Saint-Michel  are  swallowed  up  in  the 
ornate  Gothic  of  the  loftier  parts  of  the  great  pile.  Edi- 
fices wholly  of  the  Romanesque  period  must  be  sought 
in  the  parish  churches  in  which  Normandy  is  so  rich, 
or  in  the  larger  abbey-churches  which  meet  us  at  Les- 
say,  Cerisy,  Caen,  Jumteges,  and  Bocherville.  Jumi£ges, 
though  in  ruins,  preserves  the  full  outline  of  the  style  of 
the  middle  of  the  eleventh  century;  Caen  presents  in 
the  Abbaye  aux  Hommes  and  the  Abbaye  aux  Dames 
two  perfect  though  contrasted  types  of  a few  years 


188  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


later,  the  one  simple  and  austere,  the  other  richer  and 
less  grand.  Freeman  may  seem  fanciful  when  he  sug- 
gests that  these  sister  churches  express  the  spirit  of 
their  respective  founders,  “the  imperial  will  of  the  con- 
quering duke”  and  the  milder  temper  of  his  “loving 
and  faithful  duchess,”  1 but  in  any  event  they  are  Nor- 
man and  typical  of  their  age  and  country.  There  are 
elements  in  the  ornamentation  of  Norman  churches  in 
this  period  which  have  been  explained  by  reference  to 
the  distant  influence  of  the  Scandinavian  north  or  the 
Farther  East,  there  are  perhaps  traces  of  Lombard 
architecture  in  their  plan,  but  their  structure  as  a whole 
is  as  Norman  as  the  stone  of  which  they  are  built,  dis- 
tinguished by  local  traits  from  the  other  varieties  of 
French  Romanesque  to  which  this  period  gave  rise. 
Not  the  least  Norman  feature  of  these  buildings  is  the 
persistent  common  sense  of  design  and  execution;  the 
Norman  architects  did  not  attempt  the  architecturally 
impossible  or  undertake  tasks,  like  the  cathedral  of 
Beauvais,  which  they  were  unable  to  finish  in  their  own 
time  and  style.  “What  they  began,  they  completed,” 
writes  the  Nestor  of  American  historians  in  his  sym- 
pathetic interpretation  of  the  art  and  the  spirit  of  Mont- 
Saint-Michel  and  Chartres.  In  Norman  art,  as  in  other 
phases  of  Norman  achievement,  the  last  word  cannot 
be  said  till  we  have  followed  it  far  beyond  the  borders  of 
the  duchy,  northward  to  Durham,  “half  house  of  God, 
1 Norman  Conquest , ill,  p.  109. 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  189 

half  castle  ’gainst  the  Scot,”  and  the  other  massive 
monuments  which  made  1 Norman  ’ synonymous  with 
a whole  style  and  period  of  English  architecture,  and 
southward  to  those  more  ornate  structures  which 
Norman  princes  reared  at  Bari  and  Cefalti,  Palermo 
and  Monreale.  “No  art  — either  Greek  or  Byzantine, 
Italian,  or  Arab — ” says  Henry  Adams,1  “has  ever 
created  two  religious  types  so  beautiful,  so  serious,  so 
impressive,  and  yet  so  different,  as  Mont-Saint-Michel 
watching  over  its  northern  ocean,  and  Monreale,  look- 
ing down  over  its  forests  of  orange  and  lemon,  on  Pa- 
lermo and  the  Sicilian  seas.” 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

There  is  no  general  account  of  Norman  life  and  culture  in  any  pe- 
riod of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  no  general  study  of  Norman  feudalism. 
For  conditions  in  France  generally,  see  Luchaire,  La  societe  franqaise 
au  temps  de  Philippe- Auguste  (Paris,  1909),  translated  by  Krehbiel 
(New  York,  1912);  for  England,  Miss  M.  Bateson,  Mediaeval  England 
(New  York  and  London,  1904).  On  castles,  see  C.  Enlart,  Manuel 
d'archeologie  franqaise,  11  (Paris,  1904,  with  bibliography),  and 
Mrs.  E.  S.  Armitage,  The  Early  Norman  Castles  of  the  British  Isles 
(London,  1912).  For  William  the  Marshal,  see  Paul  Meyer’s  intro- 
duction to  his  edition  of  the  Histoire  de  Guillaume  le  Marechal  (Paris, 
1891-1901);  the  poem  has  been  utilized  by  Jusserand  for  his  account 
of  tournaments,  Les  sports  et  jeux  d'exercice  dans  Vancienne  France 
(Paris,  1901),  ch.  2. 

The  work  of  Delisle,  Etudes  sur  la  condition  de  la  classe  agricole  et 
Vetat  de  V agriculture  en  Normandie  au  moyen  age  (Evreux,  1851),  is  a 
classic. 


1 Mont-Saint-Michel  and  Chartres,  p.  4. 


190  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

The  best  studies  of  Norman  municipal  institutions  are  A.  Ch6ruel, 
Histoire  de  Rouen  pendant  Vepoque  communale  (Rouen,  1843);  A. 
Giry t Les  ktablissements  de  Rouen  (Paris,  1883-85),  supplemented  by 
Valin,  Recherches  sur  les  origines  de  la  commune  de  Rouen  {Precis  of  the 
Rouen  Academy,  1911) ; Charles  de  Beaurepaire,  La  Vicomte  de  VEau 
de  Rouen  (fevreux,  1856);  E.  de  Freville,  Memoir e sur  le  commerce 
maritime  de  Rouen  (Rouen,  1857);  Miss  Bateson,  The  Laws  of  Bre - 
teuily  in  English  Historical  Review , xv,  xvi ; R.  Genestal,  La  tenure  en 
hour  gage  (Paris,  1900) ; Legras,  Le  hour  gage  de  Caen  (Paris,  1911). 

The  excellent  account  of  the  Norman  church  in  H.  Bohmer,  Kirche 
und  Staat  in  England  und  in  der  Normandie  (Leipzig,  1899),  stops 
with  1154.  On  Odo  and  on  Philip  d’Harcourt  see  V.  Bourrienne’s 
articles  in  the  Revue  Catholique  de  Normandiey  vii-x,  xvm-xxm. 
The  register  of  Eudes  Rigaud  (ed.  Bonnin,  Rouen,  1852)  is  analyzed 
by  Delisle,  in  Bibliotheque  de  VILcole  des  Charles , vm,  pp.  479-99;  the 
Miracula  Ecclesie  Constantiensis  and  the  letter  of  Abbot  Haimo  are 
discussed  by  him,  ibid.,  ix,  pp.  339-52;  xxi,  pp.  113-39.  For  the 
mortuary  rolls,  see  his  facsimile  edition  of  the  Rouleau  mortuaire  du 
B . Vital  (Paris,  1909).  The  best  monograph  on  a Norman  monastery 
is  that  of  R.  N.  Sauvage,  L'abbaye  de  S.  Martin  de  Troarn  (Caen, 
1911),  where  other  such  studies  are  listed.  See  also  Genestal,  Role  des 
monastlres  comme  etablissements  de  credit  etudie  en  Normandie  (Paris, 
1901),  and  Delisle’s  edition  of  Robert  of  Torigni. 

The  schools  of  Bee  are  described  by  A.  Poree,  Histoire  de  Vabbaye 
du  Bee  (Evreux,  1901).  Notices  of  the  various  Norman  historians  are 
given  by  A.  Molinier,  Les  sources  de  Vhistoire  de  France  (Paris,  1901- 
06),  especially  11,  chs.  25,  33.  For  Ordericus  and  St.  Evroul  see 
Delisle’s  introduction  to  the  edition  of  the  Historia  Ecclesiastica  pub- 
lished by  the  Societe  de  1’ Histoire  de  France,  and  the  volumes  issued 
by  the  Societe  historique  et  archeologique  de  l’Orne  on  the  occasion  of 
the  Fetes  of  1912  (Alengon,  1912).  Other  early  catalogues  of  libra- 
ries, including  that  of  Philip  of  Bayeux,  are  in  the  first  two  volumes 
of  the  Catalogue  general  des  MSS . des  departements  (Paris,  1886-88). 
For  the  vernacular  literature,  see  Gaston  Paris,  La  litterature  normande 
avant  V annexion  (Paris,  1899);  and  L.  E.  Menger,  The  Anglo-Norman 
Dialect  (New  York,  1904).  For  the  latest  discussions  of  the  Chanson 
de  Roland  see  J.  Bedier,  Les  legendes  epiqueSy  hi  (Paris,  1912);  and  W. 
Tavernier’s  studies  in  the  Zeitschrift  fur  franzdsische  Sprache  und  Lit - 


NORMAN  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  191 

teratur , xxxvi-xlii  (1910-14),  and  the  Zeitschrift  fur  romanische 
Philologie , xxxvm  (1914).  Enlart,  Manuel  d’archeologie  frangaise , 1, 
mentions  the  principal  works  on  Norman  ecclesiastical  architecture. 
See  also  R.  de  Lasteyrie,  L' architecture  religieuse  en  France  d Vepoque 
romane  (Paris,  1912),  ch.  15;  Enlart,  Rouen  (Paris,  1904);  H.  Pren- 
tout,  Caen  et  Bayeux  (Paris,  190Q)  *.  Henry  Adams,  Mont-Saint- Michel 
and  Chartres  (Boston,  1913). 


vn 

THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH 

OF  all  the  achievements  of  the  heroic  age  of 
Norman  history,  none  were  more  daring  in 
execution  or  more  brilliant  in  results  than  the 
exploits  of  Norman  barons  in  the  lands  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Battling  against  the  infidel  in  Spain,  in  Sicily, 
and  in  Syria,  scattering  the  papal  army  and  becoming 
the  humble  vassals  of  the  Holy  See,  overcoming  Lom- 
bard princes  and  Byzantine  generals,  the  Normans  were 
the  glorious  adventurers  of  the  Mediterranean  world 
throughout  that  eleventh  century  which  constituted 
the  great  period  of  Norman  expansion.  Then,  masters 
of  southern  Italy  and  Sicily,  they  put  to  work  their 
powers  of  assimilation  and  organization  and  created  a 
strong,  well-governed  state  and  a rich,  composite  civili- 
zation which  were  the  wonder  of  Europe.  If  one  were 
tempted  to  ascribe  the  successes  of  the  Normans  in 
England  to  happy  accident  or  to  the  unique  personality 
of  William  the  Conqueror,  the  story  of  Norman  achieve- 
ment in  the  south,  the  work  of  scattered  bands  of  simple 
barons  without  any  assistance  from  the  reigning  dukes, 
would  be  conclusive  proof  of  the  creative  power  of  the 
Norman  genius  for  conquest  and  administration. 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  193 

The  earliest  relations  of  the  Normans  with  the  coun- 
tries of  the  Mediterranean  were  the  outgrowth  of  those 
pilgrimages  to  holy  places  which  play  so  important  a 
part  in  mediaeval  life  and  literature.  Originating  in  the 
early  veneration  for  the  shrines  associated  with  the  be- 
ginnings of  Christianity  and  the  sufferings  and  death  of 
the  Christian  martyrs,  pilgrimages  were  in  course  of 
time  reenforced  by  the  more  practical  motives  of  healing 
and  penance,  until  the  crowds  of  pilgrims  who  haunted 
the  roads  in  the  later  Middle  Ages  included  many  a 
hoary  offender  who  sought  to  expiate  his  sins  by  this 
particular  form  of  good  works.  Sometimes  these  peni- 
tents would  be  sent  to  wander  about  the  earth  for  a defi- 
nite time,  more  frequently  they  would  be  assigned  a 
journey  to  a neighboring  shrine  or  to  some  more  famous 
fountain  of  healing  grace,  such  as  Compostela,  Rome, 
or  Jerusalem.  Compostela,  hiding  among  the  Galician 
hills  the  bones  of  no  less  an  apostle  than  St.  James  the 
Greater,  who  became  in  time  the  patron  saint  of  Spain 
and  spread  the  name  of  Santiago  over  two  continents, 
was  early  a centre  of  pilgrimage  from  France,  and 
claimed  as  one  of  its  devotees  the  mighty  Charlemagne, 
the  footsteps  of  whose  paladins  men  traced  through  the 
dark  defiles  of  the  Pyrenees  in  the  Song  of  Roland,  as 
well  as  in  the  special  itinerary  prepared  for  the  use  of 
French  pilgrims  to  the  tomb  of  the  saint.  Rome  was  of 
course  more  important,  for  it  claimed  two  apostles,  as 
well  as  their  living  successor  on  the  pontifical  throne. 


194  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

It  needed  no  pious  invention  to  prove  that  Charlemagne 
had  been  in  Rome  and  had  received  the  imperial  crown 
as  he  knelt  in  St.  Peter’s,  and  men  told  how  in  their  own 
time  the  great  king  Canute  had  betaken  himself  thither 
with  staff  and  scrip  and  many  horses  laden  with  gold 
and  silver.  Already  the  number  of  strangers  in  Rome 
was  so  great  that  guide-books  were  compiled  indicating 
its  principal  sights  and  marvels — “seeing  Rome,”  we 
might  call  them  — ; and  as  the  processions  wound  into 
sight  of  the  Eternal  City,  they  burst  into  its  praise  in 
that  wonderful  pilgrim’s  chorus:  — 

O Roma  nobilis,  orbis  et  domina, 

Cunctarum  urbium  excellentissima, 

Roseo  martyrum  sanguine  rubea, 

Albis  et  virginum  liliis  Candida; 

Salutem  dicimus  tibi  per  omnia, 

Te  benedicimus:  salve  per  secula. 

Jerusalem  was  most  precious  of  all,  by  reason  both  of 
its  sacred  associations  and  of  the  difficulty  of  the  jour- 
ney. No  Charlemagne  was  needed  to  justify  resort  to 
the  Holy  Sepulchre,  where  the  mother  of  the  great  em- 
peror Constantine  had  built  the  first  shrine;  but  the 
great  Charles  had  a hostel  constructed  there  for  Frank- 
ish pilgrims,  and  soon  legend  makes  him,  too,  follow  the 
road  to  Constantinople  and  Jerusalem,  as  we  are  re- 
minded in  the  great  Charlemagne  window  at  Char- 
tres. There  were  manuals  for  the  pilgrim  to  Jerusalem 
also,  but  these  were  chiefly  occupied  with  how  to  reach 
the  heavenly  city,  though  one  of  them  contents  itself 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  195 

with  advising  the  traveller  to  keep  his  face  always  to 
the  east  and  ask  God’s  help. 

In  all  this  life  of  the  road  the  Normans  took  their  full 
share.  Michelet  would  have  it  that  their  motive  was  the 
Norman  spirit  of  gain,  no  longer  able  to  plunder  neigh- 
bors at  home,  but  glad  of  the  chance  of  making  some- 
thing on  the  way  and  the  certainty  of  gaining  a hundred 
per  cent  by  assuring  the  soul’s  salvation  at  the  journey’s 
end.  Certainly  they  were  not  afraid  to  travel  nor  averse 
to  taking  advantage  of  the  opportunities  which  travel 
might  bring.  We  find  them,  sometimes  singly  and 
sometimes  in  armed  bands,  on  the  road  to  Spain,  to 
Rome,  and  to  the  Holy  City.  At  one  time  it  may  be 
the  duke  himself,  Robert  the  Magnificent,  who  wends 
his  way  with  a goodly  company  to  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
only  to  die  at  Nicaea  on  his  return;  or  a holy  abbot, 
like  Thierry  of  Saint-Evroul,  denied  the  sight  of  the 
earthly  Jerusalem  which  he  sought,  but  turning  his 
thoughts  to  the  city  not  made  with  hands  as  he  com- 
posed himself  for  his  last  sleep  before  a lonely  altar  on 
the  shores  of  Cyprus.  In  other  cases  we  find  the  mili- 
tary element  preponderating,  as  with  Roger  of  Toeni, 
who  led  an  army  against  the  Saracens  of  Spain  in  the 
time  of  Duke  Richard  the  Good,  or  Robert  Crispin 
half  a century  later,  fighting  in  Spain,  sojourning  in 
Italy,  and  finally  passing  into  the  service  of  the  em- 
peror at  Constantinople,  where  he  had  “much  triumph 
cold  much  victory.”  In  this  stirring  world  the  line  be- 


196  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

tween  pilgrim  and  adventurer  was  not  easy  to  draw, 
and  the  Normans  did  not  always  draw  it.  Often  “their 
penitent’s  garb  covered  a coat  of  mail,”  and  they  carried 
a great  sword  along  with  their  pilgrim’s  staff  and  wal- 
let.1 We  must  remember  that  Normandy  exported  in 
this  period  a considerable  supply  of  younger  sons,  bred 
to  a life  of  warfare  and  fed  upon  the  rich  nourishment 
of  the  chansons  de  gestes,  but  turned  loose  upon  the 
world  to  seek  elsewhere  the  lands  and  booty  and  deeds 
of  renown  which  they  could  no  longer  expect  to  find  at 
home.  The  conquest  of  England  gave  an  outlet  to  this 
movement  in  one  direction;  the  conquest  of  southern 
Italy  absorbed  it  in  another. 

In  the  eleventh  century,  as  in  the  early  nineteenth, 
Italy  was  merely  a geographical  expression.  The  unity 
of  law  and  government  which  it  had  enjoyed  under  the 
Romans  had  been  long  since  broken  by  the  Lombard 
invasion  and  the  Frankish  conquest,  which  drew  the 
centre  and  north  of  the  peninsula  into  the  currents  of 
western  politics,  while  the  south  continued  to  look  upon 
Constantinople  as  its  capital  and  Sicily  passed  under 
the  dominion  of  the  Prophet  and  the  Fatimite  caliphs 
of  Cairo.  Separated  from  the  rest  of  Italy  by  the 
lofty  barrier  of  the  Abruzzi  and  the  wedge  of  territory 
which  the  Papacy  had  driven  through  the  lines  of  com- 
munication to  the  west,  the  southern  half  followed  a 
1 Delarc,  Les  Normands  en  Italic , p.  35, 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  197 

different  course  of  historical  development  from  the  days 
of  the  Lombards  to  those  of  Garibaldi.  Nature  had 
thrust  it  into  the  central  place  in  the  Mediterranean 
world,  to  which  the  gulfs  and  bays  of  its  long  coast-line 
opened  the  rich  hinterland  of  Campania  and  Apulia  and 
the  natural  highways  beyond.  Here  had  sprung  up 
those  cities  of  Magna  Graecia  which  were  the  cradle  of 
Italian  civilization;  here  the  Romans  had  their  chief 
harbors  at  Pozzuoli  and  Brindisi  and  their  great  naval 
base  at  Cape  Miseno;  here  the  ports  of  Gaeta,  Naples, 
Amalfi,  and  Bari  kept  intercourse  with  the  East  open 
during  the  Middle  Ages.  And  if  the  genius  of  Hamilcar 
and  Hannibal  had  once  sought  to  tear  the  south  and  its 
islands  from  Italy  to  unite  them  with  a Carthaginian 
empire,  their  close  relations  with  Africa  had  again  been 
asserted  by  the  raids  and  conquests  of  the  Saracens, 
while  their  connection  with  the  East  made  them  the  last 
stronghold  of  Byzantine  power  beyond  the  Adriatic. 
In  the  long  run,  however,  it  has  been  pointed  out  that,  if 
the  culture  of  this  region  came  from  the  south,  its  mas- 
ters have  come  from  the  north ; 1 and  its  new  masters 
of  the  eleventh  century  were  to  unify  and  consolidate 
it  at  the  very  time  when  the  rest  of  the  peninsula  was 
breaking  up  into  warring  communes  and  principalities. 
In  the  year  1000  the  unity  of  the  south  was  largely 
formal.  The  Eastern  Empire  still  claimed  authority, 
but  the  northern  region  was  entirely  independent  under 

1 Bertaux,  L’art  dans  Vltalie  meridionale,  p.  15. 


198  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

the  Lombard  princes  of  Capua,  Benevento,  and  Sa- 
lerno, while  the  maritime  republics  of  Naples,  Gaeta, 
and  Amalfi  owed  at  best  only  a nominal  subjection. 
The  effective  power  of  Byzantium  was  limited  to  the 
extreme  south,  where  its  governors  and  tax-collectors 
ruled  in  both  Apulia  and  Calabria.  Of  the  two  dis- 
tricts Calabria,  now  the  toe  of  the  boot,  was  the  more 
Greek,  in  religion  and  language  as  well  as  in  political 
allegiance,  but  its  scattered  cities  were  unable  to  defend 
themselves  against  a vigorous  attack.  The  large  Lom- 
bard population  of  Apulia  retained  its  speech  and  its 
law  and  showed  no  attachment  to  its  Greek  rulers, 
whose  exactions  in  taxes  and  military  service  brought 
neither  peace  and  security  within  nor  protection  from 
the  raids  of  the  Saracens.  There  was  abundant  material 
for  a revolt,  and  the  Normans  furnished  the  occasion. 

The  first  definite  trace  of  the  Normans  in  Italy  ap- 
pears in  or  about  the  year  1016,  when  a band  returning 
from  Jerusalem  is  found  at  Monte  Gargano  on  the  east- 
ern coast.  There  was  here  an  ancient  shrine  of  St. 
Michael,  older  even  than  the  famous  monastery  of  St. 
Michael  of  the  Peril  on  the  confines  of  Normandy  with 
which  it  had  shared  the  red  cloak  of  its  patron,  and  a 
natural  object  of  veneration  on  the  part  of  Norman 
pilgrims,  who  well  understood  the  militant  virtues  of 
the  archangel  of  the  flaming  sword.  Here  the  Normans 
fell  into  conversation  with  a Lombard  named  Meles, 
who  had  recently  led  an  unsuccessful  revolt  in  Apulia 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  199 

and  who  told  them  that  with  a few  soldiers  like  them- 
selves he  could  easily  overcome  the  Greeks,  whereupon 
they  promised  to  return  with  their  countrymen  and  as- 
sist him.  Another  story  of  the  same  year  tells  of  a body 
of  forty  valiant  Normans,  also  on  their  way  home  from 
the  Holy  Sepulchre,  who  found  a Saracen  army  besieg- 
ing Salerno  and,  securing  arms  and  horses  from  the  na- 
tives, defeated  and  drove  off  the  infidel  host.  Besought 
by  the  inhabitants  to  stay,  they  replied  that  they  had 
acted  only  for  the  love  of  God,  but  consented  to  carry 
home  lemons,  almonds,  rich  vestments,  and  other  prod- 
ucts of  the  south  as  a means  of  attracting  other  Nor- 
mans to  make  their  homes  in  this  land  of  milk  and 
honey.  Legend  doubtless  has  its  part  in  these  tales,  — 
the  good  Orderic  makes  the  twenty  thousand  Saracens 
in  front  of  Salerno  flee  before  a hundred  Normans!  — 
but  the  general  account  of  the  occasion  of  the  Norman 
expeditions  seems  correct.  Possibly  a Lombard  emis- 
sary accompanied  the  pilgrims  home  to  help  in  the  re- 
cruiting; certainly  in  1017  the  Normans  are  back  in 
force  and  ready  for  business.  There  was,  however, 
nothing  sensational  or  decisive  in  the  early  exploits  of 
the  Normans  on  Italian  soil.  The  results  of  the  first 
campaigns  with  Meles  in  northern  Apulia  were  lost  in  a 
serious  defeat  at  Canne,  and  for  many  years  the  Nor- 
mans, few  in  number  but  brave  and  skilful,  sought 
their  individual  advantage  in  the  service  of  the  various 
parties  in  the  game  of  Italian  politics,  passing  from  one 


200  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


prince  to  another  as  advantage  seemed  to  offer,  and 
careful  not  to  give  to  any  so  decisive  a preponderance 
that  he  might  dispense  with  them.  The  first  Norman 
principality  was  established  about  1030  at  Aversa,  just 
north  of  Naples,  where  the  money  of  Rouen  continued 
to  circulate  more  than  a century  afterward;  but  such 
definite  points  of  crystallization  make  their  appearance 
but  slowly,  and  the  body  of  the  Normans,  constantly 
recruited  from  home,  lived  as  mercenaries  on  pay  and 
pillage.  Their  reputation  was,  however,  established, 
and  when  the  prince  of  Salerno  was  asked  by  the  Pope 
to  disband  his  Norman  troop,  he  replied  that  it  had  cost 
him  much  time  and  money  to  collect  this  precious 
treasure,  for  whom  the  soldiers  of  the  enemy  were  "as 
meat  before  the  devouring  lions.”  1 

Among  the  Norman  leaders  the  house  of  Hauteville 
stands  out  preeminently,  both  as  the  dominant  force  in 
this  formative  period  and  as  the  ancestor  of  the  later 
princes  of  southern  Italy  and  Sicily.  The  head  of  the 
family,  Tancred,  held  the  barony  of  Hauteville,  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Coutances,  but  his  patrimony  was 
quite  insufficient  to  provide  for  his  twelve  sons,  most  of 
whom  went  to  seek  their  fortune  in  the  south,  an  elder 
group  consisting  of  William  of  the  Iron  Arm,  Drogo, 
and  Humphrey,  and  a younger  set  of  half-brothers,  of 
whom  the  most  important  are  Robert  Guiscard  and 
Roger.  At  the  outset  scarcely  distinguishable  from 
1 Aime,  Ystoire  ae  li  Normant , p.  124. 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  201 


their  fellow-warriors,  li  fortissime  Normant  of  their  his- 
torian Aim6,  the  exploits  of  these  brothers  are  cele- 
brated by  the  later  chroniclers  in  a way  which  reminds 
us  less  of  sober  history  than  of  the  heroes  of  the  sagas  or 
the  chansons  de  gestes.  William  of  the  Iron  Arm  and 
Drogo  seem  to  have  arrived  in  the  south  about  1036 
and  soon  signalized  themselves  in  the  first  invasion  of 
Sicily  and  in  the  conquest  of  northern  Apulia,  where 
William  was  chosen  leader,  or  count,  by  the  other  Nor- 
mans and  at  his  death  in  1046  succeeded  by  Drogo,  who 
was  soon  afterward  invested  with  the  county  by  the 
Emperor  Henry  III.  It  was  apparently  in  this  year 
that  Robert  Guiscard  first  came  to  Italy.  Refused  as- 
sistance by  his  brothers,  he  hired  himself  out  to  various 
barons  until  he  was  left  by  Drogo  in  charge  of  a small 
garrison  in  the  mountains  of  Calabria.  Here  he  lived 
like  a brigand,  carrying  off  the  cattle  and  sheep  of  the 
inhabitants  and  holding  the  people  themselves  for  ran- 
som. On  one  occasion  he  laid  an  ambush  for  the  Greek 
commandant  of  Bisignano  whom  he  had  invited  to  a 
conference,  and  compelled  him  to  pay  twenty  thousand 
golden  solidi  for  his  freedom.  Brigand  as  he  was,  Rob- 
ert was  more  than  a mere  bandit.  His  shrewdness  and 
resourcefulness  early  gained  him  the  name  of  Guis- 
card, or  the  wary,  and  his  Byzantine  contemporary,  the 
princess  Anna  Comnena,  has  left  a portrait  of  him  in 
which  his  towering  stature,  flashing  eye,  and  bellowing 
strength  are  matched  by  his  overleaping  ambition  and 


202  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


desire  to  dominate,  his  skill  in  organization,  and  his 
unconquerable  will.  Allied  by  marriage  to  a powerful 
baron  of  the  south,  he  soon  began  to  make  headway  in 
the  conquest  of  Calabria,  and  while  Drogo  and  his 
brother  Humphrey  were  jealous  of  Robert’s  advance- 
ment, at  Humphrey’s  death  in  1057  he  was  chosen  to 
succeed  as  count  and  leader  of  the  Normans.  Leaving  to 
the  youngest  brother  Roger,  just  arrived  from  Haute- 
ville,  the  conquest  of  Calabria  and  the  first  attempts  on 
Sicily,  Guiscard  gave  his  attention  particularly  to  the 
affairs  of  Apulia,  and  after  a series  of  campaigns  and 
revolts  completed  the  subjugation  of  the  mainland  by 
the  capture  of  Bari  in  1071.  Five  years  after  the  battle 
of  Hastings  the  whole  of  southern  Italy  had  passed  un- 
der Norman  rule.  The  south  had  been  conquered,  but 
for  whom?  Robert  was  no  king,  and  a mere  count  must 
have,  for  form’s  sake  at  least,  a feudal  superior.  And 
this  part,  strangely  enough,  was  taken  by  the  Pope. 

The  relations  of  the  Normans  with  the  Papacy  form 
not  the  least  remarkable  chapter  in  the  extraordinary 
history  of  their  dominion  in  the  south.  This  period  of 
expansion  coincided  with  the  great  movement  of  re- 
vival and  reform  in  the  church  which  was  taken  up  with 
vigor  by  the  German  Popes  of  the  middle  of  the  century 
and  culminated  some  years  later  in  the  great  pontificate 
of  Gregory  VII.  So  far  as  the  Italian  policy  of  the  Pa- 
pacy was  concerned,  the  movement  seems  to  have  had 
two  aspects,  an  effort  to  put  an  end  to  the  disorders 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  203 

produced  by  simony  and  by  the  marriage  of  the  clergy, 
evils  aggravated  in  the  south  by  the  conflicting  author- 
ity of  the  Greek  and  Latin  bishops,  and  a desire  to  ex- 
tend the  temporal  power  and  influence  of  the  Pope  in 
the  peninsula.  In  both  of  these  directions  the  conquests 
of  the  Normans  seemed  to  threaten  the  papal  interests, 
and  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  the  first  of  this  vigorous 
series  of  Popes,  Leo  IX,  interfering  actively  in  the  ec- 
clesiastical affairs  of  the  region  and  acting  as  the  de- 
fender of  the  native  population,  which  appealed  to  him 
and,  in  the  case  of  Benevento,  formally  placed  itself 
under  his  protection.  Finally,  with  a body  of  troops 
collected  in  Germany  and  in  other  parts  of  Italy,  he  met 
the  Normans  in  battle  at  Civitate,  in  1053,  and  suffered 
an  overwhelming  defeat  which  clearly  established  the 
Norman  supremacy  in  Italy.  The  Normans  could  not, 
however,  follow  up  their  victory  as  if  it  had  been  won 
over  an  ordinary  enemy ; indeed  they  seem  to  have  felt 
a certain  embarrassment  in  the  situation,  and  after 
humbling  themselves  before  the  Pope,  they  treated  him 
with  respect  and  deference  which  did  not  prevent  their 
keeping  him  for  some  months  in  honorable  detention  at 
Benevento.  Plainly  the  Normans  were  not  to  be  sub- 
dued by  force  of  arms,  and  it  soon  became  evident  to 
the  reforming  party  that  they  would  be  useful  allies 
against  the  Roman  nobles  and  the  unreformed  clergy, 
as  well  as  against  the  dangerous  authority  of  the  Ger- 
man emperor.  Accordingly  in  1059,  the  year  in  which 


204  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

the  college  of  cardinals  received  its  first  definite  constitu- 
tion as  the  electors  of  the  Pope,  Nicholas  II  held  a coun- 
cil at  the  Norman  hill-fortress  of  Melfi,  attended  by  the 
higher  clergy  of  the  south  and  also  by  the  two  chief 
Norman  princes,  Richard  of  Aversa  and  Robert  Guis- 
card.  In  return  for  the  Pope’s  investiture  of  their  lands, 
these  princes  took  an  oath  of  allegiance  and  fealty  to 
the  Holy  See  and  agreed  to  pay  an  annual  rent  to  the 
Pope  for  their  domains;  in  Robert’s  oath,  which  has 
been  preserved,  he  styles  himself  “by  the  grace  of  God 
and  St.  Peter  duke  of  Apulia  and  Calabria  and,  with 
their  help,  hereafter  of  Sicily.”  As  duke  and  vassal  of 
the  Pope,  the  cattle-thief  of  the  Calabrian  mountains 
had  henceforth  a recognized  position  in  feudal  society. 

Guiscard,  however,  was  not  the  man  to  rest  content 
with  the  position  he  had  won,  or  to  interpret  his  obliga- 
tion of  vassalage  as  an  obligation  of  obedience.  He  was 
soon  in  the  field  again,  pushing  up  the  west  coast  to 
Amalfi  and  up  the  east  into  the  Abruzzi,  taking  no  great 
pains  as  he  went  to  distinguish  the  lands  of  St.  Peter 
from  the  lands  of  others.  The  Pope  began  to  ask  himself 
what  he  had  secured  by  the  alliance,  and  a definite 
break  was  soon  followed  by  the  excommunication  of  the 
Norman  leader.  By  this  time  the  papal  see  was  occu- 
pied by  Gregory  VII,  who  as  Hildebrand  had  long  been 
the  power  behind  the  throne  under  his  predecessors,  the 
greatest,  the  most  intense,  and  the  most  uncompromis- 
ing of  the  Popes  of  the  eleventh  century;  yet  even  he 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  205 

failed  to  bend  the  Norman  to  his  will.  Fearing  a com- 
bination with  his  bitterest  enemy,  the  Emperor  Henry 
IV,  he  finally  made  peace  with  Guiscard,  and  in  the  re- 
newal of  fealty  and  investiture  which  followed,  the 
recent  conquests  of  the  Normans  were  expressly  ex- 
cepted. No  great  time  elapsed  before  the  Pope  was 
forced  to  make  a desperate  appeal  for  Norman  aid. 
After  repeated  attempts  Henry  IV  got  control  of  Rome, 
shut  up  Gregory  in  the  Castle  of  Sant’  Angelo,  and  in- 
stalled another  Pope  in  his  place,  who  crowned  Henry 
emperor  in  St.  Peter’s.  Then,  in  May,  1084,  Guiscard’s 
army  came.  The  emperor  made  what  might  be  called  ‘ a 
strategic  retreat  ’ to  the  north,  the  siege  of  Sant’  Angelo 
was  raised,  and  Rome  was  given  over  to  butchery  and 
pillage  by  the  Normans  and  their  Saracen  troops.  Fire 
followed  the  sword,  till  the  greater  part  of  the  city  had 
been  burned.  Ancient  remains  and  Christian  churches 
such  as  San  Clemente  were  ruined  by  the  flames,  and 
quarters  like  the  Caelian  Hill  have  never  recovered 
from  the  destruction.  The  monuments  of  ancient  Rome 
suffered  more  from  the  Normans  than  from  the  Van- 
dals. Unable  to  maintain  himself  in  Rome  without  a 
protector,  Gregory  accompanied  his  Norman  allies 
southward  as  far  as  Salerno,  now  a Norman  city,  where 
he  died  the  following  year,  protesting  to  the  last  that  he 
died  in  exile  because  he  had  "loved  justice  and  hated 
iniquity.”  The  year  1085  also  saw  the  end  of  Robert 
Guiscard.  Sought  as  an  ally  alike  by  the  emperors  of 


206  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


the  East  and  of  the  West,  he  had  begun  three  years 
earlier  a series  of  campaigns  against  the  Greek  empire, 
seizing  the  ports  of  Avlona  and  Durazzo  which  were 
then  as  now  the  keys  to  the  Adriatic,  and  battling  with 
the  Venetians  by  sea  and  the  Greeks  by  land  until  his 
troops  penetrated  as  far  as  Thessaly.  He  finally  suc- 
cumbed to  illness  on  the  island  of  Cephalonia  at  the  age 
of  seventy,  and  was  buried  in  his  Apulian  monastery  of 
Venosa,  where  Norman  monks  sang  the  chants  of 
Saint-Evroul  over  a tomb  which  commemorated  him  as 
“the  terror  of  the  world”:  — 

Hie  terror  mundi  Guiscardus;  hie  expulit  Urbe 
Quem  Ligures  regem,  Roma,  Lemannus  habent. 

Parthus,  Arabs,  Macedumque  phalanx  non  texit  Alexin, 

At  fuga;  sed  Venetum  nee  fuga  nee  pelagus.1 

With  the  passing  of  Robert  Guiscard  the  half-century 
of  Norman  conquest  is  practically  at  an  end,  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  another  half-century  of  rivalry  and  consolida- 
tion, until  Roger  II  united  all  the  Norman  conquests 
under  a single  ruler  and  took  the  title  of  king  in  1130, 
just  a hundred  years  after  the  foundation  of  the  first 
Norman  principality  at  Aversa.  Guiscard’s  lands  and 
title  of  duke  passed  to  his  son  Roger,  generally  called 
Roger  Borsa  to  distinguish  him  from  his  uncle  and 
cousin  of  the  same  name.  The  Norman  possessions  in 
Calabria  and  the  recent  acquisitions  in  Sicily  remained 
in  the  hands  of  Guiscard’s  brother  Count  Roger,  nomi- 
1 William  of  Malmesbury,  Gesta  Regum , p.  322. 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  207 

nally  a vassal  of  the  duke  of  Apulia,  while  the  northern 
principality  of  Capua  kept  its  independence,  to  be  sub- 
sequently exchanged  for  feudal  vassalage.  Roger  of 
Apulia,  however,  was  a weak  ruler,  in  spite  of  the  good 
will  of  the  church  and  his  uncle’s  support,  and  the  re- 
volt of  his  brother  Bohemond  and  the  Apulian  barons 
threatened  the  land  with  feudal  disintegration.  Want 
of  governance  was  likewise  writ  large  over  the  reign  of 
his  son  William,  who  succeeded  as  duke  in  1 1 1 1 and  ruled 
till  1127.  Guiscard’s  real  successor  as  a political  and 
military  leader  was  his  brother  Roger,  conqueror  and 
organizer  of  Sicily  and  founder  of  a state  which  his 
more  famous  son  turned  into  a kingdom. 

Once  master  of  Calabria,  Count  Roger  had  begun  to 
cast  longing  eyes  beyond  the  Straits  of  Messina  at  the 
rich  island  which  has  in  all  ages  proved  a temptation  to 
the  rulers  of  the  south.  No  member  of  the  house  of 
Hauteville,  their  panegyrist  tells  us,  ever  saw  a neigh- 
bor’s lands  without  wanting  them  for  himself,  and  in 
this  case  there  was  profit  for  the  soul  as  well  as  for  the 
body  if  the  count  could  “win  back  to  the  worship  of  the 
true  God  a land  given  over  to  infidelity,  and  administer 
temporally  for  the  divine  service  the  fruits  and  rents 
usurped  by  a race  unmindful  of  God.”  1 The  language 
is  that  of  Geoffrey  Malaterra;  the  excuse  meets  us 
throughout  the  world’s  history  — six  centuries  earlier 
when  Clovis  bore  it  ill  that  the  Arian  Visigoths  should 

1 Geoffrey  Malaterra,  n,  p.  i. 


208  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


possess  a fair  portion  of  Gaul  which  might  become  his, 
six  centuries  later  when  Emmanuel  Downing  thought 
it  sin  to  tolerate  the  devil-worship  of  the  Narragansetts 
“if  upon  a Just  warre  the  Lord  should  deliver  them” 
to  be  exchanged  for  the  “gaynefull  pilladge”  of  negro 
slaves; 1 nor  is  the  doctrine  without  advocates  in  our 
own  day.  We  may  think  of  the  conquest  of  Sicily  as  a 
sort  of  crusade  before  the  Crusades,  decreed  by  no 
church  council  and  spread  abroad  by  no  preaching  or 
privileges,  but  conceived  and  executed  by  Norman  en- 
terprise and  daring.  Like  the  greater  crusades  in  the 
East,  it  profited  by  the  disunion  of  the  Moslem;  like 
them,  too,  it  did  not  scruple  to  make  alliances  with  the 
infidel  and  to  leave  him  in  peaceful  cultivation  of  his 
lands  when  all  was  over. 

The  conquest  of  Sicily  began  with  the  capture  of 
Messina  in  1061  and  occupied  thirty  years.  It  was 
chiefly  the  work  of  Roger,  though  Guiscard  aided  him 
throughout  the  earlier  years  and  claimed  a share  in  the 
results  for  himself,  as  well  as  vassalage  for  Roger’s  por- 
tion. The  decisive  turning-point  was  a joint  enterprise, 
the  siege  and  capture  of  Palermo  in  1072,  which  gave 
the  Normans  control  of  the  Saracen  capital,  the  largest 
city  in  Sicily,  with  an  all-anchoring  harbor  from  which 
it  took  its  name.  The  Saracens,  however,  still  held  the 
chief  places  of  the  island:  the  ancient  Carthaginian 
strongholds  of  the  west  and  centre,  Eryx  and  ‘inex- 
1 Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections , fourth  series,  vi,  p.  65. 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  209 

pugnable  Enna,’  known  since  mediaeval  times  as  Cas- 
trogiovanni;  Girgenti,  "most  beautiful  city  of  mortals,” 
with  its  ancient  temples  and  olive  groves  rising  from  the 
shores  of  the  African  Sea;  Taormina,  looking  up  at  the 
snows  and  fires  of  Etna  and  forth  over  Ionian  waters  to 
the  bold  headlands  of  Calabria;  and  Syracuse,  sheltering 
a Saracen  fleet  in  that  great  harbor  which  had  wit- 
nessed the  downfall  of  Athenian  greatness.  To  subdue 
all  these  and  what  lay  between  required  nineteen  years 
of  hard  fighting,  varied,  of  course,  by  frequent  visits  to 
Roger’s  possessions  on  the  mainland  and  frequent  ex- 
peditions in  aid  of  his  nephew,  but  requiring,  even  when 
the  great  count  was  present  in  person,  military  and 
diplomatic  skill  of  a high  order.  When,  however,  the 
work  was  done  and  the  last  Saracen  stronghold,  Noto, 
surrendered  in  1091,  Count  Roger  had  under  his  do- 
minion a strong  and  consolidated  principality,  where 
Greeks  and  Mohammedans  enjoyed  tolerance  for  their 
speech  and  their  faith,  where  a Norman  fortress  had 
been  constructed  in  every  important  town,  and  where 
the  barons,  holding  in  general  small  and  scattered  fiefs, 
owed  loyal  obedience  to  the  count  who  had  made  their 
fortunes,  a sharp  contrast  to  the  turbulent  feudalism  of 
Apulia,  which  looked  upon  the  house  of  Hauteville  as 
leaders  but  not  as  masters.  Roger  was  also  in  a position 
to  treat  with  a free  hand  the  problems  of  the  church, 
reorganizing  at  his  pleasure  the  dioceses  which  had  dis- 
appeared under  Mohammedan  rule,  and  receiving  from 


2io  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


Pope  Urban  II  in  1098  for  himself  and  his  heirs  the  dig- 
nity of  apostolic  legate  in  Sicily,  so  that  other  legates 
were  excluded  and  the  Pope  could  treat  with  the  Sicilian 
church  only  through  the  count.  This  extraordinary 
privilege,  the  foundation  of  the  so-called  ‘Sicilian  mon- 
archy’ in  ecclesiastical  matters,  was  the  occasion  of 
ever-recurring  disputes  in  later  times,  but  the  success 
of  Roger’s  crusade  against  the  infidel  seemed  at  the 
moment  to  justify  so  unusual  a concession. 

At  his  death  in  1 101  Roger  I left  behind  him  two  sons, 
Simon  and  Roger,  under  the  regency  of  their  mother 
Adelaide.  Four  years  later  Simon  died,  leaving  as  the 
undisputed  heir  of  the  Sicilian  and  Calabrian  domin- 
ions the  ten-year-old  Roger  II,  who  at  the  age  of  sixteen 
took  personal  control  of  the  government.  During  the 
regency  the  capital  had  crossed  the  Straits  of  Messina 
from  the  old  Norman  headquarters  in  the  Calabrian 
hills  at  Mileto,  where  Roger  I lay  buried;  henceforth  it 
was  fixed  at  Palermo,  fit  centre  for  a Mediterranean 
state.  When  his  cousin  William  died,  Roger  II  was 
quick  to  seize  the  Apulian  inheritance,  which  he  had  to 
vindicate  in  the  field  not  only  against  the  revolted 
barons  but  against  the  Pope,  anxious  to  prevent  at  all 
cost  the  consolidation  of  the  Norman  possessions  in  the 
hands  of  a single  ruler.  Securing  his  investiture  with 
Apulia  from  Pope  Honorius  II  in  1128,  Roger  two  years 
later  took  advantage  of  the  disputed  election  to  the 
Papacy  to  obtain  from  Anacletus  II  the  dignity  of  king; 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  21 1 


and  on  Christmas  Day,  1130,  he  was  crowned  and 
anointed  at  Palermo,  taking  henceforth  the  title  “by 
the  grace  of  God  king  of  Sicily,  Apulia,  and  Calabria, 
help  and  shield  of  the  Christians,  heir  and  son  of  the 
great  Count  Roger.”  What  this  kingdom  was  to  mean 
in  the  history  and  culture  of  Europe  we  shall  consider 
in  the  next  lecture. 

Meanwhile,  in  order  to  complete  our  survey  of  the 
deeds  of  the  Normans  in  the  south,  we  must  take  some 
notice  of  the  part  they  played  in  the  Crusades  and  in 
the  Latin  East.  A movement  which  comprised  the 
whole  of  western  Europe,  and  even  made  Jerusalem- 
farers  out  of  their  kinsmen  of  the  Scandinavian  north, 
could  not  help  affecting  a people  such  as  the  Normans, 
who  had  already  served  a long  apprenticeship  as  pil- 
grims to  distant  shrines  and  as  soldiers  of  the  cross  in 
Spain  and  Sicily.  Three  Norman  prelates  were  present 
at  Clermont  in  1095  when  Pope  Urban  fired  the  Latin 
world  with  the  cry  Dieu  le  veut,  and  they  carried  back 
to  Normandy  the  council’s  decrees  and  the  news  of  the 
holy  war.  The  crusade  does  not,  however,  seem  to  have 
had  any  special  preachers  in  Normandy,  where  we  hear 
of  no  such  scenes  as  accompanied  the  fiery  progress  of 
Peter  the  Hermit  through  Lorraine  and  the  Rhineland, 
and  of  none  of  the  popular  movements  which  sent  men 
to  their  death  under  Peter’s  leadership  in  the  Danube 
valley  and  beyond  the  Bosporus.  Pioneers  and  men-at- 


212  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


arms  rather  than  enthusiasts  and  martyrs,  the  Normans 
kept  their  heads  when  Europe  was  seething  with  the 
new  adventure,  and  the  combined  band  of  Normans, 
Bretons,  and  English  which  set  forth  in  September, 
1096,  does  not  appear  to  have  been  very  large.  At  its 
head,  however,  rode  the  duke  of  Normandy,  Robert 
Curthose,  called  by  his  contemporaries  ‘the  soft  duke,’ 
knightly,  kind-hearted,  and  easy-going,  incapable  of 
refusing  a favor  to  any  one,  under  whom  the  good  peace 
of  the  Conqueror’s  time  had  given  way  to  general  dis- 
order and  confusion.  Impecunious  as  always,  he  had 
been  obliged  to  pawn  the  duchy  to  his  brother  William 
Rufus  in  order  to  raise  the  funds  for  the  expedition. 
With  him  went  his  fighting  uncle,  Odo  of  Bayeux,  and 
the  duke’s  chaplain  Arnulf,  more  famous  in  due  time  as 
patriarch  of  Jerusalem.  It  does  not  appear  that  Robert 
was  an  element  of  special  strength  in  the  crusading 
host,  although  he  fought  by  the  side  of  the  other  leaders 
at  Nicaea  and  Antioch  and  at  the  taking  of  Jerusalem. 
He  spent  the  winter  pleasantly  in  the  south  of  Italy  on 
his  way  to  the  East,  so  that  he  reached  Constantinople 
after  most  of  the  others  had  gone  ahead,  and  he  slipped 
away  from  the  hardships  of  the  siege  of  Antioch  to  take 
his  ease  amidst  the  pleasant  fare  and  Cyprian  wines  of 
Laodicea  1 — Robert  was  always  something  of  a Laodi- 
cean! When  his  vows  as  a crusader  had  been  fulfilled  at 
the  Holy  Sepulchre,  he  withdrew  from  the  stern  work  of 

1 Laodicea  ad  mare,  not  the  Phrygian  Laodicea  of  the  Apocalypse. 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  213 

the  new  kingdom  of  Jerusalem  and  started  home,  bring- 
ing back  a Norman  bride  of  the  south  for  the  blessing  of 
St.  Michael  of  the  Peril,  and  hanging  up  his  standard  in 
his  mother’s  abbey-church  at  Caen.  Legend,  however, 
was  kind  to  Robert:  before  long  he  had  killed  a giant 
Saracen  in  single  combat  and  refused  the  crown  of  the 
Latin  kingdom  because  he  felt  himself  unworthy,  until 
he  became  the  hero  of  a whole  long-forgotten  cycle  of 
romance. 

The  real  Norman  heroes  of  the  First  Crusade  must  be 
sought  elsewhere,  again  among  the  descendants  of  Tan- 
cred  of  Hauteville.  When  Robert  Curthose  and  his 
companions  reached  the  south  on  their  outward  jour- 
ney, they  found  the  Norman  armies  engaged  in  the 
siege  of  Amalfi  under  the  great  Count  Roger  and  Guis- 
card’s  eldest  son  Bohemond,  a fair-haired,  deep-chested 
son  of  the  north,  “so  tall  in  stature  that  he  stood  above 
the  tallest  men  by  nearly  a cubit.”  The  fresh  enter- 
prise caught  the  imagination  of  Bohemond,  who  had 
lost  the  greater  part  of  his  father’s  heritage  to  his 
brother  Roger  Borsa  and  saw  the  possibility  of  a new 
realm  in  the  East;  and,  cutting  a great  cloak  into 
crosses  for  himself  and  his  followers,  he  withdrew  from 
the  siege  and  began  preparations  for  the  expedition  to 
Palestine.  Among  those  who  bound  themselves  to  the 
great  undertaking  were  five  grandsons  and  two  great- 
grandsons  of  Tancred  of  Hauteville,  chief  among  them 
Bohemond’s  nephew  Tancred,  whose  loyalty  and  prow- 


214  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

ess  were  to  be  proved  on  many  a desperate  battle-field 
of  Syria.  Commanding  what  was  perhaps  the  strongest 
contingent  in  the  crusading  army  and  profiting  by  the 
experience  of  his  campaigns  in  the  Balkans  in  his  fa- 
ther’s reign,  Bohemond  proved  the  most  vigorous  and 
resourceful  leader  of  the  First  Crusade.  His  object, 
however,  had  little  connection  with  the  relief  of  the 
Eastern  Empire  or  the  liberation  of  the  Holy  City,  but 
was  directed  toward  the  formation  of  a great  Syrian 
principality  for  himself,  such  as  the  other  members  of 
his  family  had  created  in  Italy  and  Sicily.  As  the  centre 
for  such  a dominion  Antioch  was  far  better  suited  than 
Jerusalem  both  commercially  and  strategically,  and 
Bohemond  took  good  care  to  secure  the  control  of  this 
city  for  himself  before  obtaining  the  entrance  of  the 
crusading  forces.  He  showed  the  Norman  talent  of  con- 
ciliating the  native  elements  — Greek,  Syrian,  and  Ar- 
menian — in  his  new  state,  and  for  a time  seemed  in 
a fair  way  to  build  up  a real  Norman  kingdom  in  the 
East.  In  the  end,  however,  the  Eastern  Empire  and 
the  Turks  proved  too  strong  for  him;  he  lost  precious 
months  in  captivity  among  the  Mussulmans,  and  when 
he  had  raised  another  great  army  in  France  and  Italy 
some  years  later,  he  committed  the  folly  of  a land  ex- 
pedition against  Constantinople  which  ended  in  disas- 
ter. Bohemond  did  not  return  to  the  East,  and  his 
bones  are  still  shown  to  visitors  beneath  an  Oriental 
mausoleum  at  Canosa,  where  Latin  verses  lament  his 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  215 

loss  to  the  cause  of  the  Holy  Land.  Tancred  struggled 
gallantly  to  maintain  the  position  in  Syria  during  his 
uncle’s  absence,  but  he  fought  a losing  fight,  and  the 
principality  of  Antioch  dwindled  into  an  outlying  de- 
pendency of  the  kingdom  of  Jerusalem,  in  which  rela- 
tion it  maintained  its  existence  until  the  line  became 
extinct  with  Bohemond  VII  in  1287. 

Two  other  Norman  princes  appear  as  leaders  in  the 
course  of  the  later  Crusades,  Richard  the  Lion-Hearted, 
whose  participation  in  the  Third  Crusade  we  have  al- 
ready had  occasion  to  notice,  and  Frederick  II,  who 
succeeded  to  the  power  and  the  policy  of  his  Norman 
ancestors  of  the  south.  For  each  of  these  rulers,  how- 
ever, the  crusade  was  merely  an  episode  in  the  midst  of 
other  undertakings;  the  day  of  permanent  Frankish 
states  in  Syria  had  gone  by,  and  neither  made  any 
attempt  at  founding  a Syrian  kingdom.  The  Fourth 
Crusade  was  in  no  sense  a Norman  movement,  so  that 
the  Normans  did  not  contribute  to  the  new  France 
which  the  partition  of  the  Eastern  empire  created  on 
the  Greek  mainland,  where  Frankish  castles  rose  to 
perpetuate  the  memory  of  Burgundian  dukes  of  Athens 
and  Lombard  wardens  of  the  pass  of  Thermopylae.  In 
the  Frankish  states  of  Syria  we  find  a certain  number  of 
Norman  names  but  no  considerable  Norman  element 
in  the  Latin  population.  The  fact  is  that  the  share  of 
the  Normans  in  the  First  Crusade  was  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  their  contribution  to  the  permanent  occupa- 


216  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


tion  of  the  East.  The  principality  of  Antioch  was  the 
only  Norman  state  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean,  and 
its  distinctively  Norman  character  largely  disappeared 
with  the  passing  of  Bohemond  I and  Tancred.  Unlike 
their  fellow-Christians  of  France  and  Italy,  the  Nor- 
mans were  not  drawn  by  the  commercial  and  colonizing 
side  of  the  crusading  movement.  The  Norman  lands  in 
England  and  Italy  offered  a sufficient  field  for  colonial 
enterprise,  and  the  results  were  more  substantial  and 
more  lasting  than  the  romantic  but  ephemeral  creations 
of  Frankish  power  in  the  East,  while  the  position  of  the 
Syrian  principalities  as  intermediaries  in  Mediterranean 
civilization  was  matched  by  the  free  intermixture  of 
eastern  and  western  culture  in  the  kingdom  of  Sicily. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

The  annals  of  the  Norman  conquest  of  southern  Italy  and  Sicily 
are  best  given  by  F.  Chalandon,  Histoire  de  la  domination  normande 
en  Italie  et  en  Sidle  (Paris,  1907),  1.  O.  Delarc,  Les  Normands en  Italie 
(Paris,  1883),  is  fuller  on  the  period  before  1073,  but  less  critical.  The 
Byzantine  side  of  the  story  is  given  by  J.  Gay,  L' Italie  meridionale  et 
V empire  byzantin  (Paris,  1904);  the  Saracen,  by  Michele  Amari, 
Storia  dei  Musulmani  di  Sidlia  (Florence,  1854-72),  ill.  There  is 
nothing  in  English  fuller  than  the  introductory  chapters  of  E.  Curtis, 
Roger  of  Sidly  (New  York,  1912).  Interesting  historical  sketches  of 
particular  localities  will  be  found  in  F.  Lenormant,  La  Grande-Grece 
(Paris,  1881-84);  and  F.  Gregorovius,  Apulische  Landschaften  (Leip- 
zig, 1877).  On  the  sanctuary  of  St.  Michael  on  Monte  Gargano,  see 
E.  Gothein,  Die  Culturentwickelung  Siid-Italiens  (Breslau,  1886),  pp. 
41-111. 

No  study  has  been  made  of  the  Normans  in  Spain;  for  the  pilgrim- 


THE  NORMANS  IN  THE  SOUTH  217 

ages  to  Compostela,  see  B6dier,  Les  legendes  epiques,  hi.  For  the 
Normans  in  the  Byzantine  empire  see  G.  Schlumberger,  11  Deux  chefs 
normands  des  armees  byzan tines,”  in  Revue  historique , xvi,  pp.  289- 
303  (1881). 

There  is  nothing  on  the  share  of  the  Normans  in  the  Crusades 
analogous  to  P.  Riant,  Les  Scandinaves  en  Terre  Sainte  (Paris,  1865). 
The  details  can  be  picked  out  of  R.  Rohricht,  Geschichte  des  Konig- 
reichs  Jerusalem  (Innsbruck,  1898),  and  Geschichte  des  ersten  Kreuz - 
zuges  (Innsbruck,  1901).  There  is  no  satisfactory  biography  of  Rob- 
ert Curthose;  the  legends  concerning  him  are  discussed  by  Gaston 
Paris  in  Comptes-rendus  de  VAcademie  des  inscriptions,  1890,  pp. 
207  ff.  For  the  Norman  princes  of  Antioch,  see  B.  Kugler,  Boemund 
und  Tankred  (Tubingen,  1862);  and  G.  Rey’s  articles  in  the  Revue 
de  V Orient  latin}  iv,  pp.  321-407,  viii,  pp.  116-57  (1896,  1900). 


VIII 

THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY 

OF  the  widely  separated  lands  which  made  up 
the  greater  Normandy  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
none  have  drifted  farther  apart  than  Norman 
England  and  Norman  Sicily.  Founded  about  the  same 
time  and  not  greatly  different  in  area,  these  states  have 
lost  all  common  traditions,  until  the  history  of  the 
southern  Normans  seems  remote,  in  time  as  in  space, 
from  their  kinsmen  of  the  north.  With  the  widening 
of  the  historical  field,  southern  Italy  and  Sicily  no 
longer  occupy,  as  in  Mediterranean  days,  the  centre  of 
the  historic  stage,  and  the  splendor  of  their  early  his- 
tory has  been  dimmed  by  earthquake  and  fever,  by 
economic  distress,  and  by  the  debasing  traditions  of 
centuries  of  misrule.  Neither  in  language  nor  race  nor 
political  traditions  does  England  recognize  relationship 
between  the  country  of  the  Black  Hand  and  the  ‘ mother 
of  parliaments.’  Yet  if  the  English  world  has  lost  the 
feeling  of  kinship  for  the  people  of  the  south,  it  has  not 
lost  feeling  for  the  land.  It  was  no  mere  reminiscence 
of  ‘ Vergilian  headlands  ’ and  the  thunders  of  the  Odys- 
sey that  drew  Shelley  to  the  Bay  of  Naples,  Browning 
to  Sorrento,  or,  to  take  a parallel  example  elsewhere, 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  219 

Goethe  to  the  glowing  orange-groves  of  Palermo.  And 
it  is  not  alone  the  poet  whose  soul  responds  to 

A castle,  precipice-encurled, 

In  a gash  of  the  wind-grieved  Apennine; 

or 

A sea-side  house  to  the  farther  South, 

Where  the  baked  cicala  dies  of  drouth, 

And  one  sharp  tree  — ’t  is  a cypress  — stands. 

No  land  of  the  western  Mediterranean  has  burnt  itself 
so  deeply  into  the  imagination  and  sentiment  of  the 
English-speaking  peoples.  Twice  has  this  vivid  land  of 
the  south  played  a leading  part  in  the  world’s  life  and 
thought,  once  under  the  Greeks,  of  “wind-swift  thought 
and  city-founding  mind,”  as  we  may  read  in  the  mar- 
bles of  Paestum  and  Selinus  and  in  the  deathless  pages 
of  Thucydides;  and  a second  time  under  the  Norman 
princes  and  their  Hohenstaufen  successors,  creators  of 
an  extraordinarily  vigorous  and  precocious  state  and  a 
brilliant  cosmopolitan  culture.  If  our  interest  in  this 
brief  period  of  Sicilian  greatness  be  not  Norman,  it  is 
at  least  human,  as  in  one  of  the  culminating  points 
of  Mediterranean  civilization. 

It  must  be  emphasized  at  the  outset  that  the  history 
of  this  Norman  kingdom  was  brief.  It  had  two  rulers 
of  genius,  Roger  II,  1130-54,  and  his  grandson  Fred- 
erick II,  1198-1250,  separated  by  the  reigns  of  William 
the  Bad  and  William  the  Good,  — contemporaries  of 
Henry  II  of  England,  and  neither  so  bad  nor  so  good 


220  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


as  their  names  might  lead  us  to  suppose,  — Tancred  of 
Lecce  and  his  son  William  III,  and  Constance,  Roger’s 
daughter  and  Frederick’s  mother,  wife  of  the  Hohen- 
staufen  Emperor  Henry  VI.  It  is  usual  to  consider  the 
Norman  period  as  closing  with  the  deposition  of  William 
III  in  1194  and  to  class  Constance  and  Frederick  II 
with  the  Hohenstaufen.  In  the  case  of  Constance  there 
seems  to  be  no  possible  reason  for  this,  for  she  was  as 
Norman  as  any  of  her  predecessors  and  issued  docu- 
ments in  her  own  name  throughout  the  remaining  three 
years  of  her  husband’s  life  and  during  the  few  months 
of  1197-98  by  which  she  survived  him.  With  their  son 
Frederick  II,  half  Norman  and  half  Hohenstaufen,  the 
question  is  perhaps  even,  and  the  science  of  genetics 
has  not  yet  advanced  far  enough  to  enable  us  to  classify 
and  trace  to  their  source  the  dominant  and  the  recessive 
elements  in  his  inheritance.  No  one,  however,  can 
study  him  at  close  range  without  discovering  marked 
affinities  with  his  Norman  predecessors,  notably  the 
second  Roger,  and  the  whole  trend  of  recent  investiga- 
tion goes  to  show  that,  in  the  field  of  government  as  in 
that  of  culture,  his  policy  is  a continuation  of  the  work 
of  the  Norman  kings,  from  whom  much  of  his  legisla- 
tion is  directly  derived.  Half  Norman  by  birth,  Fred- 
erick was  preponderantly  Norman  in  his  political  herit- 
age. It  was  in  Sicily  that  he  grew  up  and  began  to  rule, 
and  in  Sicily  that  he  did  his  really  constructive  work. 
To  judge  him  as  a Hohenstaufen  is  only  less  misleading 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  221 


than  to  judge  him  as  a German  king,  for  the  centre  and 
aim  of  his  policy  lay  in  the  Mediterranean.  In  Fred- 
erick’s sons,  legitimate  and  illegitimate,  the  Norman 
strain  is  still  further  attenuated,  and  as  they  had  no 
real  opportunity  to  continue  their  father’s  work,  it 
matters  little  whether  we  call  them  Normans  or  Ho- 
henstaufen.  The  coming  of  Charles  of  Anjou  ends  this 
epoch,  and  his  victory  at  Tagliacozzo  in  1268  seals  the 
fate  of  the  dynasty.  We  may,  if  we  choose,  carry  the 
Norman  period  to  this  point;  for  all  real  purposes  it 
ends  with  the  death  of  Frederick  in  1250.  The  preced- 
ing one  hundred  and  twenty  years  embrace  the  real 
life-history  of  the  Norman  kingdom.  Brief  as  this  is,  it 
is  too  long  for  a single  lecture,  and  we  must  limit  our- 
selves to  Roger  and  the  two  Williams,  touching  on  the 
developments  of  the  thirteenth  century  only  in  the 
most  incidental  fashion. 

Throughout  this  period  the  territorial  extent  of  the 
realm  remained  practically  unchanged,  comprising  Sic- 
ily, with  Malta,  and  the  southern  half  of  the  Italian 
peninsula  as  far  as  Terracina  on  the  western  coast  and 
the  river  Tronto  on  the  eastern.  There  were  of  course 
times  when  the  royal  authority  was  disputed  within  and 
attacked  from  without,  — feudal  revolts,  raids  by  the 
Pisans,  expeditions  of  the  German  emperor,  diplomatic 
contests  with  the  Pope,  — but  it  was  not  permanently 
limited  or  shorn  of  its  territories.  There  were,  on  the 
other  hand,  moments  of  expansion,  particularly  by  sea, 


222  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


for  Sicily  was  of  necessity  a naval  power  and  early  saw 
the  importance  of  creating  a navy  commensurate  with 
its  maritime  position.  The  occupation  of  Tripoli  and 
Tunis  by  Roger  II  seized  the  Mediterranean  by  the 
throat ; the  possession  of  Corfu  threatened  the  freedom 
of  the  Adriatic;  but  neither  conquest  was  permanent, 
and  in  the  main  the  Greek  empire  and  the  powers  of 
northern  Africa  succeeded  in  keeping  the  Sicilian  kings 
within  their  natural  boundaries. 

In  area  about  four-fifths  the  size  of  England,  the 
southern  kingdom  showed  far  greater  diversity,  both  in 
the  land  and  in  its  inhabitants.  Stretching  from  the 
sub-tropical  gardens  of  Sicily  into  the  heart  of  the  high- 
est Apennines,  it  was  divided  by  mountain  and  sea  into 
distinct  natural  regions  between  which  communication 
continues  difficult  even  to-day  — the  isolated  valleys 
of  the  Abruzzi,  the  great  plain  of  Apulia,  the  ‘granite 
citadel’  of  Calabria,  the  rich  fields  of  Campania,  the 
commercial  cities  of  the  Bay  of  Naples  and  Gulf  of  Sa- 
lerno, the  contrasted  mountains  and  shore-lands  of  Sic- 
ily itself.  The  difficulties  of  geography  were  increased 
by  differences  of  race,  religion,  and  political  traditions. 
The  mass  of  the  continental  population  was,  of  course, 
of  Italian  origin,  going  back  in  part  to  the  Samnite 
shepherds  of  primitive  Italy,  and  while  it  had  been 
modified  in  many  places  by  the  Lombard  conquest,  it 
retained  its  Latin  speech  and  was  subject  to  the  au- 
thority of  the  Latin  church.  Calabria,  however,  was 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  223 

now  Greek,  in  religion  as  in  language,  and  the  Greek 
element  was  considerable  in  the  cities  of  Apulia  and 
flowed  over  into  Sicily,  where  the  chief  foreign  constit- 
uent was  African  and  Mohammedan.  Politically,  there 
was  a mixed  inheritance  of  Lombard  and  Roman  law, 
of  Greek  and  Saracen  bureaucracy,  of  municipal  inde- 
pendence, and  of  Norman  feudalism,  entrenched  in  the 
mountain-fortresses  of  upper  Apulia  and  the  Abruzzi; 
while  the  diverse  origins  of  the  composite  state  were  ex- 
pressed in  the  sovereign’s  official  title,  “king  of  Sicily, 
of  the  duchy  of  Apulia,  and  of  the  principality  of 
Capua.”  The  union  of  these  conflicting  elements  into 
a single  strong  state  was  the  test  and  the  triumph  of 
Norman  statesmanship. 

Plainly  the  terms  of  this  political  problem  were  quite 
different  from  that  set  the  Norman  rulers  of  England. 
Whatever  local  divergences  careful  study  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  England  may  still  reveal,  there  were  no  differ- 
ences of  religion  or  of  general  political  tradition,  while 
the  rapidity  of  the  conquest  at  the  hands  of  a single 
ruler  made  possible  a uniform  policy  throughout  the 
whole  country.  The  convenient  formula  of  forfeiture 
and  regrant  of  all  the  land,  for  example,  created  at  once 
uniformity  of  tenure  and  of  social  organization.  More- 
over, as  we  have  already  seen,  back  of  the  Norman  con- 
quest of  England  lay  Normandy  itself,  firmly  organized 
under  a strong  duke,  who  took  with  him  across  the 


224  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

Channel  his  household  officers  and  his  lay  and  spiritual 
counsellors  to  form  the  nucleus  of  his  new  central  gov- 
ernment, which  was  in  many  respects  one  with  the  cen- 
tral government  of  Normandy.  In  the  south  none  of 
these  favoring  conditions  prevailed.  A country  com- 
posed of  many  diverse  elements  was  conquered  by 
different  leaders  and  at  different  times,  so  that  there 
could  be  no  question  of  uniformity  of  system.  Indeed 
there  could  be  no  system  at  all,  for  the  Normans  came 
as  individual  adventurers,  with  no  governmental  or- 
ganization behind  them,  and  the  instruments  of  govern- 
ment which  they  used  had  to  be  created  as  they  went 
along.  Whatever  of  Norman  tradition  reached  the  south 
could  come  only  in  the  subdivided  and  attenuated  form 
of  individual  influences.  Furthermore,  the  Norman  in- 
gredient in  the  population  continued  relatively  small. 
The  scattered  bands  of  early  days  were  of  course  reen- 
forced as  time  went  on,  but  there  was  never  any  general 
migration  or  any  movement  that  affected  the  mass  of 
the  population  in  town  and  country.  If  we  had  any 
statistics,  we  should  doubtless  find  that  some  hundreds 
or  at  most  a few  thousands  would  cover  the  entire  Nor- 
man population  of  Italy  and  Sicily.  These  brought  with 
them  their  speech,  their  feudal  tenures,  probably  some 
elements  of  Norman  customary  law;  but,  given  their 
small  numbers,  they  could  not  hope  to  Normanize  a vast 
country,  where  their  language  soon  disappeared  and 
their  identity  was  ultimately  lost  in  the  general  mass. 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  225 

Under  such  conditions  there  could  be  no  general  trans- 
plantation of  Norman  institutions.  The  rulers  were 
Norman,  as  were  the  holders  of  the  great  fiefs,  but,  to 
speak  paradoxically,  the  most  Norman  thing  about  their 
government  was  its  non-Norman  character,  that  is  to 
say,  its  quick  assimilation  of  alien  elements  and  its 
statesmanlike  treatment  of  native  customs  and  institu- 
tions. The  Norman  leaders  were  too  wise  to  attempt 
an  impossible  Normanization. 

The  policy  of  toleration  in  political  and  religious 
matters  had  its  beginnings  in  the  early  days  of  the  Nor- 
man occupation,  but  it  received  a broad  application 
only  in  the  course  of  the  conquest  of  Sicily  by  the  Great 
Count,  and  was  first  fully  and  systematically  carried 
out  by  his  son  Roger  II.  In  religion  this  meant  the  full- 
est liberty  for  Greeks,  Jews,  and  Mohammedans,  and 
even  the  maintenance  of  the  hierarchy  of  the  Greek 
Church  and  the  encouragement  and  enrichment  of 
Basilian  monasteries  along  with  the  Benedictine  foun- 
dations which  were  marked  objects  of  Norman  generos- 
ity. In  law  it  meant  the  preservation  of  local  rights  and 
customs  and  of  the  usages  of  the  several  distinct  ele- 
ments in  the  population,  Latin  and  Greek,  Hebrew  and 
Saracen.  In  local  administration  it  involved  the  reten- 
tion of  the  local  dignitaries  of  the  cities  and  the  Byzan- 
tine offices  of  the  strategos  and  the  catepan,  as  well  as 
the  fiscal  arrangements  established  by  the  Saracens  in 
Sicily.  And  finally  in  the  central  government  itself,  the 


226  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 


need  of  dealing  wisely  and  effectively  with  the  various 
peoples  of  the  kingdom  necessitated  the  employment 
of  men  familiar  with  each  of  them,  and  the  maintenance 
of  a secretarial  bureau  which  issued  documents  in 
Greek  and  Arabic  as  well  as  in  Latin. 

It  was  in  the  central  administration  that  Roger  II 
faced  his  freshest  problem,  which  was  nothing  less  than 
the  creation  of  a strong  central  government  for  a king- 
dom which  had  never  before  been  united  under  a single 
resident  ruler.  His  method  was  frankly  eclectic.  We 
are  told  that  he  made  a point  of  inquiring  carefully  into 
the  practices  of  other  kings  and  countries  and  adopt- 
ing anything  in  them  which  seemed  to  him  valuable, 
and  that  he  drew  to  his  court  from  every  land,  regard- 
less of  speech  and  faith,  men  who  were  wise  in  counsel 
or  distinguished  in  war,  among  whom  the  brilliant  ad- 
miral George  of  Antioch  is  a conspicuous  example. 
Nevertheless  we  should  err  if  we  thought  of  him  as 
making  a mere  artificial  composite.  The  Calabria  of 
his  youth  had  preserved  a stiff  tradition  of  Byzantine 
administration,  and  the  Mohammedans  of  Sicily  had 
an  even  stronger  bureaucracy  at  work.  Roger’s  capital 
was  at  Palermo,  and  it  was  natural  that  the  Greek 
and  Saracen  institutions  of  Sicily  and  Calabria  should 
prove  the  formative  influences  in  his  government  as  it 
was  extended  to  the  newly  acquired  and  less  centralized 
regions  of  the  mainland.  There  was  free  adaptation  and 
use  of  experience,  but  the  loose  feudal  methods  of  the 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  227 

Normans  were  profoundly  modified  by  the  bureaucratic 
traditions  of  the  East. 

The  central  point  in  the  government  lay,  as  in  the 
states  beyond  the  Alps,  in  the  curia  of  feudal  vassals  and 
particularly  in  its  more  permanent  nucleus  of  house- 
hold officials  and  immediate  advisers  of  the  king.  But 
whereas  in  the  other  parts  of  western  Europe  the  feudal 
baronage  still  prevailed  exclusively  and  gave  way  but 
slowly  before  the  growth  of  specialized  training  and 
competence,  the  professional  element  was  present  in  the 
Sicilian  curia  from  an  early  period  in  the  logothetes  and 
emirs  which  Roger  II  had  taken  over  from  the  earlier 
organization.  The  chancery,  with  its  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Arabic  branches,  was  inevitably  a more  complicated 
institution  than  in  the  other  western  kingdoms,  and  its 
documents  imitated  Byzantine  and  papal  usage,  even 
in  externals.  At  one  point,  however,  it  shows  close  par- 
allelisms with  the  Anglo-Norman  chancery,  namely  in 
the  free  use  of  those  mandata  or  administrative  writs 
which  are  still  rare  in  the  secular  states  of  the  twelfth 
century;  and  if  we  remember  that  their  employment 
constitutes  the  surest  index  of  the  efficiency  of  a mediae- 
val administrative  system,  we  must  conclude,  what  is 
evident  in  other  ways,  that  the  most  vigorous  govern- 
ments of  the  period  were  the  two  Norman  kingdoms. 
In  judicial  matters  the  parallel  is  also  instructive. 
Here  a professional  class  had  existed  in  the  south  from 
the  outset  as  an  inheritance  from  the  Byzantine  period, 


228  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

and  it  early  makes  its  appearance  in  the  curia  in  the 
person  of  a group  of  justices  who  in  time  seem  com- 
pletely to  absorb  the  judicial  functions  of  the  larger 
body.  At  the  same  time  the  Norman  barons  were  util- 
ized for  the  royal  justiciars  which  King  Roger  estab- 
lished throughout  all  parts  of  his  kingdom.  Parallel  to 
these  provincial  justices  ran  provincial  chamberlains, 
and  over  them  there  were  later  established  master  jus- 
tices and  master  chamberlains  for  the  great  districts  of 
Apulia  and  Capua,  all  subject  to  the  central  curia. 

The  fiscal  system  was  especially  characteristic. 
Roger’s  biographer  tells  us  that  the  king  spent  his  spare 
time  in  close  supervision  of  the  receipts  and  expendi- 
tures of  his  government,  and  that  everything  relating 
to  the  accounts  was  carefully  kept  in  writing.  Begin- 
ning with  his  reign  we  have  documentary  evidence  of  a 
branch  of  the  curia,  called  in  Arabic  diwan,  in  Greek 
creKpe rov,  and  in  Latin  either  duana  or  secretum,  and 
acting  as  a central  financial  body  for  the  whole  king- 
dom. It  kept  voluminous  registers,  called  in  Arabic 
defetir,  and  as  its  officers  and  clerks  were  largely  Sara- 
cens, it  seems  plainly  to  go  back  to  Saracenic  anteced- 
ents. There  are,  however,  some  traces  on  the  mainland 
of  careful  descriptions  of  lands  and  serfs  like  those 
which  it  extracted  from  its  records  in  Sicily  under  the 
name  of  platecc,  so  that  Byzantine  survivals  should  also 
be  taken  into  account  in  studying  the  origin  of  the  in- 
stitution. Indeed  this  whole  system  presupposes  elabo- 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  229 

rate  surveys  and  registers  of  the  land  and  its  inhab- 
itants such  as  were  made  in  the  Egypt  of  the  Ptolemies 
and,  less  completely,  in  the  Roman  empire,  and  such  as 
meet  us,  in  a ruder  and  simpler  form,  in  that  unique 
northern  record,  the  Domesday  survey  of  1086,  itself 
perhaps  suggested  by  some  knowledge  of  the  older  sys- 
tem in  Italy.  No  one  can  fail  to  note  the  striking  analo- 
gies between  the  Sicilian  duana  and  the  Anglo-Norman 
exchequer,  but  the  disappearance  of  all  records  of  the 
southern  bureau  precludes  any  comparison  of  their 
actual  organization  and  procedure.  The  only  parallel 
records  which  have  reached  us  are  the  registers  of  feudal 
holdings,  which  exhibit  noteworthy  similarities  in  the 
tenures  of  the  two  kingdoms. 

Such  feudal  institutions  were  evidently  a matter  of 
common  inheritance,  but  any  connections  indicated  by 
similar  administrative  arrangements  were  doubtless 
due  to  later  imitation  from  one  side  or  the  other.  Roger 
II  in  Sicily  and  Henry  I and  Henry  II  in  England  were 
at  work  upon  much  the  same  sort  of  governmental  prob- 
lem, and  Roger  was  not  alone  in  looking  to  other  lands 
for  suggestions.  Among  the  foreigners  whom  Roger 
drew  into  his  service  we  find  Englishmen  such  as  his 
chancellor,  Robert  of  Selby,  and  one  of  his  chaplains 
and  fiscal  officers,  Thomas  Brown,  who  later  returned 
to  his  native  land  to  fill  an  honored  place  in  the  ex- 
chequer of  Henry  II.  There  was  constant  intercourse 
between  the  two  kingdoms  in  the  twelfth  century,  and 


230  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

abundant  opportunity  to  keep  one  government  in- 
formed of  the  administrative  experiments  of  the  other. 

In  general,  however,  the  Sicilian  monarchy  was  of  a far 
more  absolute  and  Oriental  type  than  is  found  among 
the  northern  Normans  or  anywhere  else  in  western 
Europe.  The  king’s  court,  with  its  harem  and  eunuchs, 
resembled  that  of  the  Fatimite  caliphs;  his  ideas  of 
royal  power  were  modelled  upon  the  empire  of  Con- 
stantinople. The  only  contemporary  portrait  of  King 
Roger  which  has  reached  us,  the  mosaic  of  the  church 
of  the  Martorana  at  Palermo,  represents  him  clothed  in 
the  dalmatic  of  the  apostolic  legate  and  the  imperial 
costume  of  Byzantium,  and  receiving  the  crown  di- 
rectly from  the  hands  of  Christ ; and  a similar  portrayal 
of  the  coronation  of  King  William  II  shows  that  the 
scene  was  meant  to  be  typical  of  the  divine  right  of  the 
king,  responsible  to  no  earthly  authority.  Theocratic 
in  principle,  the  Sicilian  monarchy  drew  its  inspiration 
from  the  law-books  of  Justinian  as  well  as  from  the  liv- 
ing example  on  the  eastern  throne.  The  series  of  laws 
or  assizes  issued  by  King  Roger  naturally  reflects  the 
composite  character  of  the  Norman  state.  The  mass  of 
local  custom  is  not  superseded,  the  feudal  obligations  of 
the  vassals  are  clearly  recognized,  influences  of  canon  law 
and  Teutonic  custom  are  clearly  traceable,  indeed  the 
northern  conception  of  the  king’s  peace  may  have  been 
their  starting-point;  but  the  great  body  of  these  de- 
crees flows  directly  from  the  Roman  law,  as  preserved 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  231 

and  modified  by  the  Byzantine  emperors.  The  royal 
power  is  everywhere  exalted,  often  in  phrases  where  the 
king  is  substituted  for  the  emperor  of  the  Roman  origi- 
nal, and  the  law  of  treason  is  applied  in  detail  to  the 
protection  of  royal  documents,  royal  coins,  and  royal 
officers.  Even  to  question  the  king’s  ordinances  or  de- 
cisions is  on  a par  with  sacrilege. 

The  test  of  such  phrases  was  the  possession  of  ade- 
quate military  and  financial  resources.  Of  the  strength 
of  King  Roger’s  army  his  long  and  successful  wars  offer 
sufficient  evidence;  the  great  register  of  his  military 
fiefs,  the  so-called  Catalogue  of  the  Barons,  indicates 
that  the  feudal  service  could  be  increased  when  neces- 
sity demanded,  while  contingents  of  Saracen  troops 
were  as  valuable  to  him  as  they  had  been  to  his  father. 
Much  the  same  can  be  said  of  his  navy,  for  the  safety  of 
the  Sicilian  kingdom  and  its  position  in  Mediterranean 
politics  depended  in  large  measure  upon  sea  power,  and 
Roger’s  fleet  has  a distinguished  record  in  his  Italian 
and  African  campaigns.  Army  and  navy  and  civil  ser- 
vice, however,  rested  ultimately  upon  the  royal  treasury, 
and  among  its  contemporaries  the  Sicilian  kingdom  en- 
joyed a deserved  reputation  for  great  wealth.  Its  re- 
sources consisted  partly  in  the  products  of  the  soil,  such 
as  the  grain  and  cotton  and  peltry  which  were  exported 
from  Sicily  itself ; partly  in  manufactures,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  silk  industry  which  King  Roger  developed  in 
Palermo ; and  partly  in  the  unrivalled  facilities  for  trade 


232  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

which  were  presented  by  its  many  harbors  and  its  ad- 
vantageous location  with  respect  to  the  great  sea  routes. 
Under  the  Norman  kings  the  commerce  of  the  southern 
kingdom  was  passive,  rather  than  active,  that  is  to  say, 
it  was  carried  on,  not  mainly  by  its  own  cities,  such  as 
Bari  and  Amalfi,  which  had  enjoyed  great  prosperity 
in  the  Byzantine  period  and  lost  their  local  independ- 
ence under  the  Normans,  but  by  commercial  powers 
from  without  — Pisa,  Genoa,  and  Venice.  The  relative 
importance  of  each  of  these  varied  with  the  vicissitudes 
of  Italian  politics,  but  among  them  they  shared  the  ex- 
ternal trade  of  the  kingdom.  We  find  the  Venetians  on 
the  eastern  coast,  the  Genoese  and  Pisans  at  Salerno 
and  the  chief  ports  of  Sicily,  where  they  had  special 
warehouses  and  often  considerable  colonies;  and  the 
earliest  commercial  records  of  Genoa  and  Pisa,  notably 
the  register  of  the  Genoese  notary,  John  the  Scribe, 
enable  us  to  follow  their  business  from  merchant  to 
merchant  and  from  port  to  port.  Sicily  served  not  only 
as  a place  for  the  exchange  of  exports  for  foreign  prod- 
ucts, the  cloth  of  northern  Italy  and  France  and  the 
spices  and  fabrics  of  the  East,  but  also  as  a stage  in 
the  trade  with  the  Orient  by  the  great  highway  of  the 
Straits  of  Messina  or  with  Africa  and  Spain  by  way  of 
Palermo  and  the  ports  of  the  western  and  southern  coast. 
From  all  this  the  king  took  his  toll.  Without  foregoing 
any  of  their  feudal  or  domanial  revenues  or  extensive 
monopolies,  Roger  and  his  successors  tapped  this  grow- 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  233 

ing  commerce  by  port  dues  and  by  tariffs  on  exports 
and  imports,  thus  securing  their  ready  money  from  that 
merchant  class  upon  which  the  future  monarchies  of 
western  Europe  were  to  build.  The  income  from  Pa- 
lermo alone  was  said  to  be  greater  than  that  which  the 
king  of  England  derived  from  his  whole  kingdom. 

It  is  evident,  even  from  this  brief  outline,  that  the 
Sicilian  state  was  not  only  a skilful  blending  of  political 
elements  of  diverse  origin,  but  also  that  it  stood  well  in 
advance  of  its  contemporaries  in  all  that  goes  to  make 
a modern  type  of  government.  Its  kings  legislated  at  a 
time  when  lawmaking  was  rare;  they  had  a large  in- 
come in  money  when  other  sovereigns  lived  from  feudal 
dues  and  the  produce  of  their  domains;  they  had  a well 
established  bureaucracy  when  elsewhere  both  central 
and  local  government  had  been  completely  feudalized; 
they  had  a splendid  capital  when  other  courts  were  still 
ambulatory.  Its  only  rival  in  these  respects,  the  Anglo- 
Norman  kingdom  of  the  north,  was  inferior  in  financial 
resources  and  had  made  far  less  advance  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  class  of  trained  officials  through  whom  the 
progress  of  European  administration  was  to  be  realized. 
Judged  by  these  tests,  it  is  not  too  much  to  call  the 
kingdom  of  Roger  and  his  successors  the  first  modern 
state,  just  as  Roger’s  non-feudal  policy,  far-sightedness, 
and  diplomatic  skill  have  sometimes  won  for  him  the 
title  of  the  first  modern  king.  This  designation,  I am 
well  aware,  has  more  commonly  been  reserved  for  the 


234  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

younger  of  Sicily’s  “two  baptized  sultans,”1  Freder- 
ick II  — stupor  mundi  et  immutator  mirabilis,  “the won- 
der of  the  world  and  a marvellous  innovator.”  No  one 
can  follow  the  career  of  this  most  gifted  and  fascinating 
figure  without  feeling  the  modern  elements  in  his  char- 
acter and  in  his  administration  of  the  Sicilian  state. 
His  government  stands  ahead  of  its  contemporaries 
in  the  thirteenth  century  as  does  that  of  Roger  in  the 
twelfth,  and  the  more  recent  naturally  seems  the  more 
modern.  It  is  not,  however,  clear  that  the  relative  su- 
periority was  greater,  and  recent  studies  have  made 
plain,  what  was  not  at  first  realized,  that  considerable 
portions  of  Frederick’s  legislation  and  of  his  adminis- 
trative system  go  back  to  his  Norman  predecessors, 
some  of  them  to  Roger  himself.  After  all  it  is  not  the 
historian’s  business  to  award  prizes  for  being  modern, 
especially  when  it  is  not  always  plain  in  what  moder- 
nity consists.  The  main  point  is  to  recognize  the  striking 
individuality  of  the  Sicilian  state  in  directions  which 
other  states  were  in  time  to  follow,  and  to  remember 
that  this  individuality  was  a continuous  thing  and  not  a 
creation  of  the  second  Frederick.  Moreover,  as  we  shall 
shortly  see,  what  is  true  in  the  field  of  government  is 
also  true  in  the  field  of  civilization : the  brilliant  cos- 
mopolitan culture  of  the  thirteenth  century  is  a di- 
rect development  from  similar  conditions  under  King 
Roger. 

1 The  phrase  is  Amari’s:  Storia  dei  Musulmani  di  Sicilia , hi,  p.  365. 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  235 

The  culture  of  the  Norman  kingdom  was  even  more 
strikingly  composite  than  its  government.  Both  his- 
torically and  geographically  Sicily  was  the  natural 
meeting-point  of  Greek,  Arabic,  and  Latin  civilization, 
and  a natural  avenue  for  the  transmission  of  eastern  art 
and  learning  to  the  West.  Moreover,  in  the  intellectual 
field  the  splendor  of  the  Sicilian  kingdom  coincides 
with  that  movement  which  is  often  called  the  renais- 
sance of  the  twelfth  century  and  which  consisted  in 
considerable  measure  in  the  acquisition  of  new  knowl- 
edge from  the  Greeks  of  the  East  and  the  Saracens  of 
Sicily  and  Spain.  Sicily  was  not  the  only  channel 
through  which  the  wisdom  of  the  East  flowed  west- 
ward, for  there  were  scholars  from  northern  Italy  who 
visited  Constantinople  and  there  was  a steady  diffusion 
of  Saracen  learning  through  the  schools  of  Spain.  No- 
where else,  however,  did  Latin,  Greek,  and  Arabic  civ- 
ilization live  side  by  side  in  peace  and  toleration,  and 
nowhere  else  was  the  spirit  of  the  renaissance  more 
clearly  expressed  in  the  policy  of  the  rulers. 

The  older  Latin  culture  of  the  southern  kingdom  had 
its  centre  and  in  large  measure  its  source  at  Monte  Cas- 
sino,  mother  of  the  Benedictine  monasteries  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  western  Christendom. 
Founded  by  St.  Benedict  in  529,  this  establishment  still 
maintains  the  unique  record  of  fourteen  centuries  of  mo- 
nastic history  and  of  more  than  forty  generations  of  fol- 
lowers of  the  Benedictine  rule,  keeping  age  after  age 


236  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY  . 

their  vigils  of  labor,  prayer,  and  fasting,  but  feasting 
their  uncloistered  eyes  — per  gV  occhi  almeno  non  v’  & 
clausural  — upon  the  massive  ranges  of  the  central 
Apennines  and  the  placid  valley  of  the  Garigliano, 
“the  Land  of  Labor  and  the  Land  of  Rest.”  Its  golden 
age  was  the  eleventh  and  early  twelfth  centuries,  when 
its  relations  with  the  Normans  and  the  Papacy  kept  it 
in  the  forefront  of  Italian  politics,  when  two  of  its  ab- 
bots sat  upon  the  throne  of  St.  Peter,  and  when  the 
greatest  of  them,  Desiderius  — as  Pope  known  as  Victor 
III  — built  a great  basilica  which  was  adorned  by 
workmen  from  Constantinople  with  mosaics  and  with 
the  great  bronze  doors  which  are  the  chief  surviving 
evidence  of  its  early  splendor.  Men  of  learning  were 
drawn  to  the  monastery,  like  the  monk  Constantine  the 
African,  skilled  in  the  science  of  the  Greek  and  Arabic 
physicians,  whose  works  he  translated  into  Latin. 
Manuscripts  of  every  sort  were  copied  in  the  character- 
istic south-Italian  hand,  the  Beneventan  script,  which 
serves  as  a sure  index  of  the  intellectual  activity 
throughout  the  southern  half  of  the  peninsula  in  this 
period  — sermons  and  service-books,  theological  com- 
mentaries and  lives  of  the  saints,  but  also  the  law-books 
of  Justinian  and  the  writings  of  the  Latin  poets  and 
historians  with  their  commentators.  Indeed  without 
the  scribes  of  Monte  Cassino  the  world  would  have  lost 
some  of  its  most  precious  monuments  of  antiquity  and 
the  early  Middle  Ages,  including  on  the  mediaeval  side 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  23 7 

the  oldest  of  the  papal  registers,  that  of  John  VIII,  and 
on  the  classical,  Varro,  Apuleius,  and  the  greater  part 
of  the  works  of  Tacitus.  Nowhere  else  is  the  work  of 
the  monasteries  as  the  preservers  of  ancient  learning 
more  manifest. 

The  home  of  Greek  learning  in  Italy  was  likewise  to 
be  found  in  monasteries,  in  those  Basilian  foundations 
which  had  spread  over  Calabria  and  the  Basilicata  in 
the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  and  now  under  Norman 
protection  sent  out  new  colonies  like  the  abbey  of  San 
Salvatore  at  Messina.  Enriched  with  lands  and  rents 
and  feudal  holdings,  they  also  set  themselves  to  the 
building  up  of  libraries  by  copies  and  by  manuscripts 
brought  from  the  East;  but  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from 
the  ancient  catalogues  and  from  the  scattered  frag- 
ments which  survive  their  dispersion,  these  collections 
were  almost  entirely  biblical  and  theological  in  charac- 
ter, including  however  splendid  examples  of  calligraphy 
such  as  the  text  of  the  Gospels,  written  in  silver  letters 
on  purple  vellum  and  adorned  with  beautiful  minia- 
tures, which  is  still  preserved  in  the  cathedral  of  Ros- 
sano. 

Meanwhile,  and  largely  as  a result  of  the  constant 
relations  between  southern  Italy  and  the  Greek  East, 
learning  had  spread  beyond  monastery  walls  and  ec- 
clesiastical subjects,  and  had  begun  to  attract  the  at- 
tention of  men  from  the  north.  An  English  scholar, 
Adelard  of  Bath,  who  visited  the  south  at  the  beginning 


238  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

of  the  twelfth  century,  found  a Latin  bishop  of  Syracuse 
skilled  in  all  the  mathematical  arts,  a Greek  philosopher 
of  Magna  Grsecia  who  discoursed  on  natural  philoso- 
phy, and  the  greatest  medical  school  of  Europe  in  the 
old  Lombard  capital  at  Salerno,  early  famed  as  the  city 
of  Hippocrates  and  the  seat  of  the  oldest  university 
in  the  West.  A generation  later,  another  Englishman, 
the  humanist  John  of  Salisbury,  studies  philosophy 
with  a Greek  interpreter  in  Apulia  and  drinks  the 
heavy  wines  of  the  Sicilian  chancellor;  while  still  others 
profit  by  translations  of  Greek  philosophical  and  mathe- 
matical works  from  the  Italian  libraries.  The  distinc- 
tive element  in  southern  learning  lay,  however,  not  on 
the  Latin  side,  but  in  its  immediate  contact  with  Greek 
and  Arabic  scholarship,  and  the  chief  meeting-point  of 
these  various  currents  of  culture  was  the  royal  court  at 
Palermo,  direct  heir  to  the  civilization  of  Saracen 
Sicily. 

The  Sicilian  court,  like  the  kingdom,  was  many- 
tongued  and  cosmopolitan,  its  praises  being  sung  alike 
by  Arabic  travellers  and  poets,  by  grave  Byzantine 
ecclesiastics,  and  by  Latin  scholars  of  Italy  and  the 
north.  A Greek  archimandrite,  Neilos  Doxopatrios, 
produced  at  King  Roger’s  request  a History  of  the  Five 
Patriarchates  directed  against  the  supremacy  of  the 
Pope  of  Rome;  a Saracen,  Edrisi,  prepared  under  his 
direction  the  greatest  treatise  of  Arabic  geography, 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  239 

celebrated  long  afterward  as  “King  Roger’s  Book.” 
Under  William  I the  chief  literary  figures  are  likewise 
connected  with  the  court:  Eugene  the  Emir,  a Greek 
poet  thoroughly  conversant  with  Arabic  and  deeply 
versed  in  the  mathematics  and  astronomy  of  the  an- 
cients; and  Henricus  Aristippus,  archdeacon  of  Catania 
and  for  a time  chief  minister  of  the  king,  a collector  of 
manuscripts,  a translator  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Dio- 
genes Laertius,  and  an  investigator  of  the  phenomena 
connected  with  the  eruption  of  Etna  in  a spirit  which 
reminds  us  less  of  the  age  of  the  schoolmen  than  of  the 
death  of  the  younger  Pliny.  Such  a literary  atmosphere 
was  peculiarly  favorable  to  the  production  of  transla- 
tions from  the  Greek  and  Arabic  into  Latin,  and  we  can 
definitely  connect  with  Sicily  the  versions  which  made 
known  to  western  Europe  the  Meno  and  Plruzdo  of 
Plato,  portions  of  the  Meteorology  and  of  certain  other 
works  of  Aristotle,  the  more  advanced  writings  of  Eu- 
clid, and  the  Almagest  of  Ptolemy,  the  greatest  of  an- 
cient and  mediaeval  treatises  on  astronomy.  In  a very 
different  field  we  have  from  Roger’s  reign  a Greco - 
Arabic  psalter  and  an  important  group  of  New  Testa- 
ment manuscripts.  “While  we  Germans  were  in  many 
respects  barbarians,”  says  Springer,  “the  ruling  classes 
in  Sicily  enjoyed  the  almost  over-ripe  fruits  of  an 
ancient  culture  and  combined  Norman  vigor  of  youth 
with  Oriental  refinement  of  life.”  1 

1 Bilder  aus  der  neueren  Kunstgeschichie , i,  p.  159. 


240  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

There  were  lacking  in  the  twelfth  century  the  poetic 
and  imaginative  elements  which  flourished  at  the  court 
of  Frederick  II,  but  on  the  scientific  and  philosophical 
sides  there  is  clear  continuity  in  the  intellectual  history 
of  the  south  from  Roger  II  and  William  to  Frederick  II 
and  Manfred.  At  one  point  it  is  even  probable  that  an 
actual  material  connection  can  be  traced,  for  the  collec- 
tion of  Greek  manuscripts  upon  which  Manfred  set 
great  store  seems  to  have  had  its  origin  in  codices 
brought  from  Constantinople  to  Palermo  under  the  first 
Norman  kings;  and  as  Manfred’s  library  probably 
passed  into  the  possession  of  the  Popes,  it  became  the 
basis  of  the  oldest  collection  of  Greek  manuscripts  in 
the  Europe  of  the  humanists.  Within  its  limits  the 
intellectual  movement  at  the  court  of  King  Roger  and 
his  son  had  many  of  the  elements  of  a renaissance,  and 
like  the  great  revival  of  the  fourteenth  century,  it  owed 
much  to  princely  favor.  It  was  at  the  kings’  request 
that  translations  were  undertaken  and  the  works  of 
Neilos  and  Edrisi  written,  and  it  was  no  accident  that 
two  such  scholars  as  Aristippus  and  Eugene  of  Palermo 
occupied  high  places  in  the  royal  administration.  In 
their  patronage  of  learning,  as  well  as  in  the  enlightened 
and  anti-feudal  character  of  their  government,  the 
Sicilian  sovereigns,  from  Roger  to  Frederick  II,  belong 
to  the  age  of  the  new  statecraft  and  the  humanistic 
revival. 

The  art  of  the  Sicilian  kingdom,  like  its  learning  and 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  241 

its  government,  was  the  product  of  many  diverse  ele- 
ments, developing  on  the  mainland  into  a variety  of 
local  and  provincial  types,  but  in  Sicily  combined  and 
harmonized  under  the  guiding  will  of  the  royal  court. 
Traces  of  direct  Norman  influence  occur,  as  in  the  tow- 
ers and  exterior  decoration  of  the  cathedral  of  Cefalh  or 
in  the  plan  of  that  great  resort  of  Norman  pilgrims,  the 
church  of  St.  Nicholas  at  Bari;  but  in  the  main  the 
Normans,  in  Bertaux’s  phrase,  contributed  little  more 
than  the  cement  which  bound  together  the  artistic  ma- 
terials furnished  by  others.1  These  materials  were 
abundant  and  various,  the  Roman  basilica  and  the 
Greek  cupola,  the  bronze  doors  and  the  brilliant  mosa- 
ics of  Byzantine  craftsmen,  the  domes,  the  graceful 
arches  and  ceilings,  and  the  intricate  arabesques  of 
Saracen  art;  yet  in  the  churches  and  palaces  of  Sicily 
they  were  fused  into  a beautiful  and  harmonious  whole 
which  still  dazzles  us  with  its  splendor.  The  chief  ex- 
amples of  this  ‘Norman’  style  are  to  be  found  at 
Cefalu,  King  Roger’s  cherished  foundation,  where  he 
prepared  his  last  resting-place  in  the  great  porphyry 
sarcophagus  later  transported  to  Palermo,  and  where 
Byzantine  artists  worked  in  blue  and  gold  wonderful 
pictures  of  Christ  and  the  Virgin  and  stately  figures  of 
archangels  and  saints  of  the  Eastern  Church;  at  Mon- 
reale, the  royal  mount  of  William  II,  commanding  the 
inexhaustible  wealth  of  Palermo’s  Golden  Shell  and 
1 V art  dans  V Italic  m£ridionaley  p.  344. 


242  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

serving  as  the  incomparable  site  of  a great  cathedral, 
with  storied  mosaics  of  every  color  covering  its  walls 
and  vaulted  ceiling  like  an  illuminated  missal,  and  with 
cloisters  of  rare  and  piercing  beauty;  and  between  them, 
in  space  and  time,  the  palaces  and  churches  of  Palermo 
— the  church  of  the  Martorana,  built  in  the  Byzantine 
style  and  endowed  with  a Greek  library  by  Roger’s  ad- 
miral George  of  Antioch,  the  Saracenic  edifices  of  San 
Cataldo  and  San  Giovanni  degli  Eremiti,  and  the  un- 
surpassed glories  of  the  Cappella  Palatina  — all  set 
against  the  brilliant  background  of  the  Sicilian  capital, 
which  owes  to  the  Norman  kings  its  unique  place  in  the 
history  of  art. 

Welcoming  merchants  and  strangers  of  every  land 
and  race,  containing  within  itself  organized  communi- 
ties of  Greeks,  Mohammedans,  and  Jews,  each  with  its 
own  churches,  mosques,  or  synagogues,  the  Palermo  of 
the  twelfth  century  was  a great  cosmopolitan  city  and 
the  natural  centre  of  a Mediterranean  art.  Midway 
between  Cordova  and  Constantinople,  between  Africa 
and  Italy,  it  laid  them  all  under  contribution.  Travel- 
lers celebrated  the  luxuriant  gardens  of  the  city  and  its 
surrounding  plain,  with  the  vast  fields  of  sugar  cane  and 
groves  of  orange,  fig,  and  lemon,  olive  and  palm  and 
pomegranate,  its  commodious  harbor  and  its  spacious 
and  busy  streets,  its  gorgeous  fabrics  and  abundance  of 
foreign  wares,  its  walls  and  palaces  and  places  of  wor- 
ship. “A  stupendous  city,”  says  the  Spanish  traveller, 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  243 

Ibn  Giobair,1  “elegant,  graceful,  and  splendid,  rising 
before  one  like  a temptress”  . . . and  offering  its  king  — 
“may  Allah  take  them  from  him!  — every  pleasure  in 
the  world.”  An  artist’s  city,  too,  distinguished  by  the 
qualities  which  Goethe  saw  in  it,  “the  purity  of  its 
light,  the  delicacy  of  its  lines  and  tones,  the  harmony 
of  earth  and  sea  and  sky.” 

From  the  highest  point  in  the  capital  rose  the  royal 
palace,  which  still  retains,  in  spite  of  the  transforma- 
tions of  eight  centuries,  something  of  the  massiveness 
and  the  splendor  of  its  Norman  original,  of  which  it 
preserves  the  great  Pisan  tower,  — once  the  repository 
of  the  royal  treasure,  — the  royal  chapel,  and  one  of  the 
state  apartments  of  King  Roger’s  time.  Its  terraces  and 
gardens  have  long  since  disappeared,  with  their  marble 
lions  and  plashing  fountains  which  resembled  the  Al- 
hambra or  the  great  pleasure-grounds  of  the  Moham- 
medan East;  but  we  can  easily  call  them  to  life  with 
the  aid  of  the  Saracen  poets  and  of  the  remains  of  the 
other  royal  residences  which  surrounded  the  city  “like 
a necklace  of  pearls.”  Here,  amid  his  harem  and  his 
eunuchs,  the  officers  of  his  court  and  his  retinue  of 
Mohammedan  servants,  the  king  lived  much  after  the 
manner  of  an  Oriental  potentate.  On  state  occasions  he 
donned  the  purple  and  gold  of  the  Greek  emperors  or 
the  sumptuous  vestments  of  red  samite,  embroidered 

1 His  description  is  translated  by  Amari,  Biblioteca  arabo-sicula  (Tu- 
rin, 1888),  1,  pp.  155  ff.;  and  by  Schiaparelli,  Ibn  Gubayr  (Rome,  1906), 
pp.  328  ff.  Cf.  Waern,  Mediaeval  Sicily , pp.  64  ff. 


244  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

with  golden  tigers  and  camels  and  Arabic  invocations 
to  the  Christian  Redeemer,  which  are  still  preserved 
among  the  treasures  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  at 
Vienna.  And  when,  on  festivals,  he  entered  the  palace 
chapel,  Latin  in  its  ground-plan,  Greek  and  Arabic  in 
its  ornamentation,  the  atmosphere  was  likewise  Orien- 
tal. As  described  at  its  dedication  in  1140,  with  the 
starry  heavens  of  its  ceiling  and  the  flowery  meadows 
of  its  pavement,  the  chapel  preserves  its  fundamental 
features  to-day.  Dome  and  choir  are  dominated  by 
great  Byzantine  figures  of  Christ,  accompanied  by 
Byzantine  saints  and  scenes  with  Greek  inscriptions,  all 
executed  with  the  fullest  brilliancy  of  which  mosaics 
are  capable,  while  the  stalactite  ceiling,  “dripping  with 
all  the  elaborate  richness  of  Saracen  art,”  seems  “to 
re-create  some  forgotten  vision  of  the  Arabian  Nights.” 
Harmonious  in  design  yet  infinitely  varied  in  detail, 
rich  beyond  belief  in  color  and  in  line,  reflecting  alike 
the  dim  rays  of  its  pendent  lamps  or  the  full  light  of  the 
southern  sun,  the  Cappella  Palatina  is  the  fullest  and 
most  adequate  expression  of  the  many-sided  art  of  the 
Norman  kingdom  and  the  unifying  force  of  the  Norman 
kings. 

Brilliant  but  ephemeral,  precocious  but  lacking  in 
permanent  results  — such  are  the  judgments  com- 
monly passed  upon  the  Sicilian  kingdom  and  its  civili- 
zation. At  best  the  kingdom  seems  to  reach  no  farther 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  245 

than  Frederick  II,  and  of  him  Freeman  has  said  that, 
though  qualified  by  genius  to  start  some  great  move- 
ment or  begin  some  new  era,  he  seemed  fated  to  stand 
at  the  end  of  everything  which  he  touched  — the  medi- 
aeval empire,  the  Sicilian  kingdom,  the  Norman-Ho- 
henstaufen  line.1  In  the  field  of  government  these 
statements  are  in  the  main  true:  the  rapid  changes  of 
dynasties  and  the  deep  political  decline  into  which  the 
south  ultimately  fell  destroyed  the  unity  of  its  political 
development  and  nullified  the  work  of  Norman  state- 
building, so  that  the  enduring  results  of  Norman  states- 
manship and  Norman  law  must  be  sought  in  the  north 
and  not  in  Italy.  That,  however,  is  not  the  whole  of  the 
story,  and  in  the  field  of  culture  influences  less  palpable, 
but  none  the  less  real,  flowed  from  the  Norman  stream 
into  the  general  currents  of  European  civilization.  So 
long  as  the  Renaissance  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries  was  looked  upon  as  simply  the  negation  of  the 
Middle  Ages  by  a return  to  classical  antiquity,  figures 
such  as  King  Roger  and  Frederick  II  were  merely 
‘sports,’  isolated  flashes  of  genius  and  modernity  with- 
out any  relation  to  their  own  times  or  to  the  greater 
movement  which  followed.  Since,  however,  we  have 
come  to  view  the  Renaissance  in  its  larger  aspects  as 
far  more  than  a classical  revival,  its  relations  to  the 
Middle  Ages  are  seen  to  have  been  much  more  intimate 

1 “The  Emperor  Frederick  the  Second/’  in  Historical  Essays , first 
series,  p.  291. 


246  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

and  important  than  was  once  supposed.  The  evolution 
is  at  times  rapid,  but  the  Trecento  grows  out  of  the  cen- 
turies which  preceded  as  naturally  as  it  grew  into  the 
Quattrocento  which  followed.  The  place  of  Italy  in  this 
process  is  universally  recognized;  the  place  of  southern 
Italy  is  sometimes  overlooked.  We  are  too  prone  to 
forget  that  Niccola  Pisano  was  also  called  Nicholas  of 
Apulia;  that  Petrarch  owed  much  to  his  sojourn  at  the 
Neapolitan  court;  that  Boccaccio  learned  his  Greek 
from  a Calabrian;  that  the  first  notes  of  a new  Italian 
literature  were  sounded  at  the  court  of  Frederick  II. 
Many  phases  of  the  relation  between  south  and  north 
in  this  transitional  period  are  still  obscure,  but  of  the 
significance  of  the  southern  contribution  there  is  now 
reasonable  assurance.  Moreover,  the  continuity  be- 
tween the  intellectual  movement  under  Roger  and 
William  I and  that  under  Frederick  II  and  later  can  be 
followed  in  some  detail  in  the  history  of  individual 
manuscripts  and  authors.  When  humanists  like  Pe- 
trarch and  Salutati  read  Plato’s  Phcedo  or  Ptolemy’s 
Almagest,  their  libraries  show  that  they  used  the  Latin 
versions  of  the  Sicilian  translators  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury. The  learning  of  the  southern  kingdom  may  have 
been  a faint  light,  but  it  was  handed  on,  not  extin- 
guished. 

For  our  general  understanding  of  the  Normans  and 
their  work,  it  is  well  that  we  should  trace  them  in  the 
lands  where  their  direct  influence  grows  faint  and  dim, 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  247 

as  well  as  in  those  where  their  descendants  still  rule. 
Only  a formal  and  mechanical  view  of  history  seeks  to 
ticket  off  particular  races  against  particular  regions  as 
the  sole  sources  of  population  and  power;  only  false 
national  pride  conceives  of  any  people  as  continually  in 
the  vanguard  of  civilization.  Races  are  mixed  things, 
institutions  and  civilization  are  still  more  complex,  and 
no  people  can  claim  to  be  a unique  and  permanent 
source  of  light  and  strength.  Outside  of  Normandy  the 
Normans  were  but  a small  folk,  and  sooner  or  later  they 
inevitably  lost  their  identity.  They  did  their  work  pre- 
eminently not  as  a people  apart,  but  as  a group  of  lead- 
ers and  energizers,  the  little  leaven  that  leaveneth  the 
whole  lump.  Wherever  they  went,  they  showed  a mar- 
vellous power  of  initiative  and  of  assimilation;  if  the 
initiative  is  more  evident  in  England,  the  assimilation 
is  more  manifest  in  Sicily.  The  penalty  for  such  activity 
is  rapid  loss  of  identity;  the  reward  is  a large  share  in 
the  general  development  of  civilization.  If  the  Nor- 
mans paid  the  penalty,  they  also  reaped  the  reward, 
and  they  were  never  more  Norman  than  in  adopting 
the  statesmanlike  policy  of  toleration  and  assimilation 
which  led  to  their  ultimate  extinction.  Plus  ga  change , 
plus  c’est  la  mitue  chose! 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

The  best  general  account  of  the  Norman  kingdom  is  that  of  Cha- 
landon,  who  carries  its  history  to  1194  and  gives  also  a provisional 


248  NORMANS  IN  EUROPEAN  HISTORY 

description  of  its  institutions  and  an  unsatisfactory  chapter  on  its 
civilization.  E.  Caspar,  Roger  II  (Innsbruck,  1904),  is  the  best  book 
on  the  reign;  Curtis,  Roger  of  Sicily,  is  convenient.  G.  B.  Siragusa,  II 
regno  di  Guglielmo  I (Palermo,  1885-86),  and  I.  La  Lumia,  Storia  della 
Sicilia  sotto  Guglielmo  il  Buono  (Florence,  1867),  need  revision.  For 
Constance,  T.  Toeche,  Kaiser  Heinrich  VI  (Leipzig,  1867),  is  still 
useful. 

The  treatment  of  Sicilian  institutions  by  E.  Mayer,  Italienische 
Verfassungsgeschichte  (Leipzig,  1909),  is  too  juristic.  There  is  an  ex- 
cellent book  on  the  chancery  by  K.  A.  Kehr,  Die  Urkunden  der  nor - 
mannisch-sicilischen  Konige  (Innsbruck,  1902);  and  on  the  duana 
there  are  important  monographs  by  Amari,  in  the  Memorie  dei  Lincei , 
third  series,  11,  pp.  409-38  (1878);  and  by  C.  A.  Garufi,  in  Archivio 
storico  italiano , fifth  series,  xxvii,  pp.  225-63  (1901).  For  local  ad- 
ministration see  the  valuable  study  of  Miss  E.  Jamison,  The  Norman 
Administration  of  Apulia  and  Capua , in  Papers  of  the  British  School  at 
Rome , vi,  pp.  211-481  (1913).  See  also  H.  Niese,  Die  Gesetzgebung  der 
normannischen  Dynastie  im  Regnum  Siciliae  (Halle,  1910);  Haskins, 
“ England  and  Sicily  in  the  Twelfth  Century,”  in  English  Historical 
Review , xxvi,  pp.  433-47,  641-65  (191 1) ; W.  Cohn,  Die  Geschichte  der 
normannisch-sicilischen  Flotte  (Breslau,  1910);  R.  Straus,  Die  Juden 
im  Konigreich  Sizilien  (Heidelberg,  1910);  F.  Zechbauer,  Das  mittel- 
alterliche  Strafrecht  Siziliens  (Berlin,  1908) ; and  various  studies  in  the 
Miscellanea  Salinas  (Palermo,  1907)  and  the  Centenario  Michele  Amari 
(Palermo,  1910).  The  commerce  of  the  Sicilian  kingdom  is  described 
by  A.  Schaube,  Handels  geschichte  der  romanischen  Volker  (Munich, 
1906). 

For  Monte  Cassino  in  this  period  see  E.  A.  Loew,  The  Beneventan 
Script  (Oxford,  1914),  with  the  works  there  cited;  R.  Palmarocchi, 
Uabbazia  di  Montecassino  e la  conquista  normanna  (Rome,  1913).  On 
the  Greek  monasteries,  see  Gay,  Ultalie  meridionale;  P.  Batiffol, 
Labbaye  de  Rossano  (Paris,  1891);  K.  Lake,  “The  Greek  Monasteries 
in  South  Italy,”  in  Journal  of  Theological  Studies , iv,  v (1903-04); 
and  F.  LoParco,  Scolario-Saba , in  Atti  of  the  Naples  Academy,  new 
series,  1 (1910).  The  best  account  of  Saracen  culture  in  Sicily  is  still 
that  of  Amari.  On  the  south-Italian  and  Sicilian  translators,  see  O. 
Hartwig,  “Die  Uebersetzungsliteratur  Unteritaliens  in  der  norman- 


THE  NORMAN  KINGDOM  OF  SICILY  249 

nisch-staufischen  Epoche,”  in  Centralblatt  fur  Bibliothekswesen , hi, 
pp.  161-90,  223-25,  505  (1886);  Haskins  and  Lockwood,  The  Sicilian 
Translators  of  the  Twelfth  Century  and  the  First  Latin  Version  of  Ptol- 
emy's Almagest , in  Harvard  Studies  in  Classical  Philology , xxi,  pp. 
75-102  (1910);  Haskins,  ibid.,  xxiii,  pp.  155-166;  xxv,  pp.  87-105. 
On  the  Sicilian  origin  of  the  Greek  MSS.  of  the  papal  library,  see  J. 
L.  Heiberg,  in  Oversigt  of  the  Danish  Academy,  1891,  pp.  305-18;  F. 
Ehrle,  in  Festgabe  Anton  de  Waal  (Rome,  1913),  pp.  348-51.  The  con- 
nection of  the  intellectual  movement  of  the  twelfth  century  with  the 
renaissance  under  Frederick  II  is  well  brought  out  by  Niese,  “Zur 
Geschichte  des  geistigen  Lebens  am  Hofe  Kaiser  Friedrichs  II,”  in 
Historische  Zeitschrift , cvm,  pp.  473-540  (1912).  In  general  see  F. 
Novati,  Le  origini , in  course  of  publication  in  the  Storia  letter  aria 
d' Italia  (Milan,  since  1897). 

The  development  of  art  in  the  south  in  this  period  is  treated  by  A. 
Venturi,  Storia  dell ’ arte  italiana  (Rome,  1901  ff.)y  11,  ch.  3;  111,  ch.  2. 
See  also  C.  Diehl,  Hart  byzantin  dans  Iltalie  meridionale  (Paris, 
1894).  For  the  continental  territories  there  is  an  excellent  account  in 
E.  Bertaux,  Hart  dans  Vltalie  meridionale  (Paris,  1904).  There  is 
nothing  so  good  for  Sicily,  although  there  are  monographs  on  particu- 
lar edifices.  Diehl,  Palerme  et  Syracuse  (Paris,  1907),  is  a good  sketch 
with  illustrations;  Miss  C.  Waern,  Mediaeval  Sicily  (London,  1910),  is 
more  popular.  Freeman  has  a readable  essay  on  “The  Normans  at 
Palermo,”  in  his  Historical  Essays , third  series,  pp.  437-76.  See  also 
A.  Springer,  “Die  mittelalterliche  Kunst  in  Palermo,”  in  his  Bilder 
aus  der  neueren  Kunstgeschichte  (Bonn,  1886),  1,  pp.  157-208;  and 
A.  Goldschmidt,  “Die  normannischen  Konigspalaste  in  Palermo,”  in 
Zeitschrift  fur  Bauwesen , xlviii,  coll.  541-90  (1898).  Interesting  as- 
pects of  twelfth-century  Palermo  are  depicted  in  the  Bern  codex  of 
Peter  of  Eboli,  reproduced  by  Siragusa  for  the  Istituto  Storico  Ita- 
liano  (1905)  and  by  Rota  for  the  new  edition  of  Mura  tori  (1904-10). 
Surviving  portions  of  the  royal  costume  are  reproduced  by  F.  Bock, 
Die  Kleinodien  des  heil.-rdmischen  Reiches  (Vienna,  1864). 


THE  END 


INDEX 


Abacus,  106/. 

Abruzzi,  196,  204,  222  /. 

Adams,  Henry,  quoted,  12,  22, 188  /. 
Adelaide,  countess,  210. 

Adelard  of  Bath,  177,  179,  238. 
Africa,  196/.,  222,  232. 

Aime  of  Monte  Cassino,  13,  200  /. 
Alengon,  63,  178. 

Alexander  II,  Pope,  74,  79,  165,  175. 
Alfred,  king,  34. 

Alphonso  VIII,  king,  90. 

Amalfi,  19 7/.,  204,  213,  232. 

Amari,  M.,  216,  248;  quoted,  234. 
Anacletus  II,  Pope,  210. 

Andeli,  134. 

Angers,  61-63. 

Angoulime,  160. 

Anjou,  counts  of,  61,  85;  relations 
with  Normandy,  61-63,  85,  100, 
112,  131,  136/. 

Anna  Comnena,  quoted,  201. 
Anselm,  175-78. 

Antioch,  212;  principality,  214-16. 
Apulia,  186,  197-21 1,  222  /.,  228, 
238,  246. 

Aquitaine,  87/.,  90,  100,  120/.,  136. 
Arabic  elements  in  Sicilian  state, 
226-30,  235,  238-44. 

Architecture,  Norman,  9-12,  102, 
186-89;  Sicilian,  189,  241-44. 
Archives,  Norman,  9,  66/.,  105,  178. 
Argentan,  10,  71,  133,  139,  153. 
Arlette,  mother  of  William  the 
Conqueror,  53,  166. 

Arnulf  of  Chocques,  patriarch,  212. 
Arnulf,  bishop  of  Lisieux,  167. 
Arthur,  duke  of  Brittany,  136-39. 
Assizes,  Anglo-Norman,  94,  100, 
in/.,  161;  Sicilian,  230/.,  234. 
Aversa,  200,  204,  206. 

Avranches,  172,  175,  178. 


Avranchin,  28. 

Avre,  7. 

Bailli , 103,  145. 

Barfleur,  132,  160. 

Bari,  189,  197,  202,  232,  241. 

Baudri  of  Bourgueil,  76. 

Bayeux,  10,  46,  49,  67,  76,  150  /., 
162, 166, 172, 1 87;  Black  Book,  hi. 
See  Odo,  Turold,  Richard,  Philip 
d’Harcourt. 

Bayeux  Tapestry,  76  /.,  80,  84,  151, 
167. 

Bayonne,  161. 

Bee,  1 71,  185;  schools,  175  /.;  li- 
brary, 177-80. 

Becket,  4,  100,  118,  168. 

Belleme,  154. 

Benevento,  198,  203. 

Benoit  de  Sainte-More,  184. 
Bertaux,  E.,  quoted,  197,  241. 
Bessin,  10,  28. 

Bibliographical  notes,  24/.,  51,  83/., 
in/.,  147, 189-91, 216/.,  247-49. 
Bisignano,  201. 

Bocage,  10. 

Boccaccio,  246. 

Bocherville,  Saint-Georges  de,  169, 
187. 

Bohemond  I,  prince  of  Antioch,  207, 
213-16. 

Bohmer,  H.,  quoted,  165. 

Bonneval,  154. 

Bordeaux,  88. 

Boutmy,  E.,  quoted,  101. 

Breteuil,  154,  160. 

Brittany,  6-8,  10,  57,  61,  75,  88, 
I36-39- 

Bryce,  James,  Viscount,  quoted,  43. 
Buchanan,  James,  17/. 

Bury  St.  Edmund’s,  173. 


INDEX 


252 

Caen,  10/.,  71,  133,  139,  143,  153, 
160,  166,  172,  184;  abbeys,  12, 
58,  160,  I63,  171,  174,  186-88,  213. 

Calabria,  176,  198,  201-11,  222,  226, 
237,  246. 

Caliphs,  Fatimite,  196,  230. 

Campania,  197,  222. 

Canada,  Normans  in,  3/.,  13,  16. 

Canaries,  Normans  in,  4,  13. 

Canne,  199. 

Canosa,  214. 

Canterbury,  56,  81,  175. 

Canute,  king,  52,  54,  74,  194. 

Cappella  Palatina,  242-44. 

Capua,  198,  207,  223,  228. 

Carentan,  172. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  quoted,  101,  173. 

Castles,  Norman,  68/.,  102,  133-35, 
139,  \5o-53,  163,  209. 

Castrogiovanni,  209. 

Caux,  8. 

Cefalu,  189,  241. 

Cerisy,  187. 

Chancery,  of  Henry  II,  96-99;  of 
Sicilian  kingdom,  226  /. 

Channel  Islands,  144/.,  1 72,  184. 

Charlemagne,  18,  31/.,  80,  86,  193/. 

Charles  VII,  king  of  France,  144. 

Charles  of  Anjou,  king  of  Naples, 
221. 

Charles  the  Simple,  27,  45. 

Charte  aux  Normands , 142. 

Charter,  Great,  140,  142. 

Chartres,  cathedral,  169-71,  186, 
194;  school,  177. 

Chateau  Gaillard,  9,  134  /.,  139. 

Chaucer,  his  ‘povre  persoun,’  169. 

Cherbourg,  4/.,  59,  162. 

Chinon,  116. 

Chronicle , Anglo-Saxon,  quoted,  32, 
34,  55-58. 

Church,  Norman,  67,  71  /.,  81, 
100,  164  Jf.;  the  Greek,  198,  203, 
209,  223,  225,  237,  241. 

Civitate,  203. 

Classics,  Latin,  in  Norman  libraries, 
179;  at  Monte  Cassino,  235-37; 
Greek,  in  Sicily,  239/.,  246. 


Clermont,  21 1. 

Clovis,  207. 

Cluny,  164. 

Colombieres,  116. 

Commerce,  Norman,  4,  73,  81, 

160-63;  Sicilian,  231-33, 242;  Vik- 
ing, 37- 

Compostela,  16,  193,  217. 

Conan,  163. 

Conches,  154. 

Conquest,  Norman,  of  England,  72- 
81;  its  results,  81-83,  100  j/->  145 
/. ; of  Italy,  198  ff.\  the  two  com- 
pared, 223-25. 

Constance,  empress,  220. 
Constantine  the  African,  236. 
Constantinople,  194-96,  212,  214, 
235  /.,  240. 

Corneille,  4,  12. 

Cotentin,  28,  50. 

Courcy,  154. 

Coutances,  169,  172,  200;  cathedral, 
10,  186/.  See  Geoffrey  de  Mow- 
bray. 

Coutume  de  Normandie , 11,  48  /., 
108,  142,  145. 

Crusades,  Normans  in,  2,  89,  91, 
100,  127-31,  184,  208,  211-17. 
Curia  regis , 103,  108,  227/. 

Danegeld,  34,  104. 

Danelaw,  31. 

Daudet,  Alphonse,  quoted,  5. 

Davis,  H.  W.  C.,  quoted,  15. 

Delarc,  O.,  quoted,  196. 

Delbriick,  H.,  quoted,  77/. 

Delisle,  L.,  4, 114,  189/.;  quoted,  97. 
Dieppe,  4/.,  160. 

Dieulafoy,  quoted,  135. 

Dives,  75. 

Domesday,  66,  no,  172,  229. 
Domfront,  63,  154,  172. 

Dover,  166. 

Downing,  E.,  208. 

Drogo  of  Hauteville,  200-02. 

D uana , 228  /. 

Dudo  of  Saint  Quentin,  27,  47,  180. 
Durham,  188. 


INDEX 


253 


Edrisi,  238-40. 

Edward  the  Confessor,  king,  73-75. 

Eleanor  of  Aquitaine,  queen,  89, 
118,  120,  123,  184. 

Emma,  queen,  73. 

Empire,  Angevin,  85;  Eastern,  91, 
94,  129,  197-99,  201  /.,  206,  214- 
17,  222,  226-31,  243;  German, 
87;  Holy  Roman,  64,  86,  244; 
Norman,  85-113;  its  destruction, 

116-39. 

England,  Normandy  compared  with, 
5/.;  Northmen  in,  32-34;  before 
the  Normans,  101-03,  223;  Nor- 
man Conquest,  52,  72-83;  results, 
22/.,  100-13;  145  /•»  151  /•;  loss 
of  Normandy,  139-44. 

Enna,  209. 

Eryx,  208. 

Escorial,  178. 

Ethelred,  king,  73. 

Etna,  209,  239. 

Eudes  Rigaud,  archbishop  of  Rouen, 
168/.,  183. 

Eugene  of  Palermo,  emir,  239  /. 

Eure,  7. 

fivreux,  184,  187. 

Exchequer,  11,  103-08,  142,  229. 

Exmes,  71. 

Falaise,  10,  53,  59,  133,  139,  153. 

Fecamp,  160,  164,  171,  178. 

Feudalism,  60,  64,  93,  133,  136-38, 
233;  Norman,  67-69, 82,  145,  149- 
57;  in  southern  Italy,  209,  223-31. 

Finance,  Anglo-Norman,  69-71, 
103-08;  Sicilian,  225,  228/.,  232/. 

Flanders,  61,  75. 

Flaubert,  G.,  4,  8,  12;  quoted,  5. 

Fontevrault,  117. 

France,  Normandy  as  a part  of,  6 
16,  18-24,  48;  feudal  relations 
with  Normandy,  63-66;  govern- 
ment compared  with  that  of  Nor- 
mandy, 64,  69-71;  geographical 
unity,  124-26;  how  it  conquered 
and  absorbed  Normandy,  126-44; 
Norman  influence  on,  23,  144. 


France,  Anatole,  quoted,  178. 

Franks,  Normandy  under,  16,  20/., 
26. 

Frederick  Barbarossa,  emperor,  86 
/•>  128/. 

Frederick  II,  king  of  Sicily  and 
emperor,  24,  215,  219-21,  240, 
245/. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  83;  on  William  the 
Conqueror,  53-56;  on  the  Norman 
Conquest,  73,  83,  101,  145  /. ; on 
the  battle  of  Hastings,  77;  on 
Norman  castles,  151;  on  the 
abbeys  of  Caen,  188;  on  Freder- 
ick II,  245. 

Fulk  Rechin,  quoted,  62/. 

Gaeta,  19  7/. 

Gaimar,  184. 

Gascony,  88-91,  100,  139,  16 1. 

Gavrai,  172. 

Genoa,  232. 

Geoffrey,  duke  of  Brittany,  120. 

Geoffrey  Malaterra,  quoted,  13,  207. 

Geoffrey  Martel,  count  of  Anjou, 
61-63. 

Geoffrey  de  Mowbray,  bishop  of 
Coutances,  10,  186/. 

Geoffrey  Plantagenet,  count  of 
Anjou,  85,  89,  99,  1 12. 

Geoffrey,  illegitimate  son  of 
Henry  II,  116. 

George  of  Antioch,  admiral,  226, 242. 

Gilbert  Crispin,  abbot  of  West- 
minster, 175. 

Giobair,  Ibn,  quoted,  243. 

Giraldus  Cambrensis,  quoted,  117/., 
123. 

Girgenti,  209. 

Gisors,  132/.,  135/. 

Glanvill,  108. 

Goethe,  219,  243. 

Greek  influences  in  southern  Italy 
and  Sicily,  198,  209,  219,  223, 
225-31,  235,  237-46. 

Green,  J.  R.,  quoted,  122. 

Gregory  VII  Pope,  72,  165  /.,  202, 
204/. 


INDEX 


254 

Grentemaisnil,  154. 

Grimoud,  60. 

Guernsey,  144/. 

Gummere,  F.  B.,  quoted,  41. 

Guy  of  Amiens,  76. 

Hamburg,  33. 

Haro , 145. 

Harold,  king  of  England,  73-80. 
Harold  Fairhair,  28,  38. 

Hastings,  battle  of,  75-80,  84,  15 1, 
166,  202. 

Hastings,  Viking  leader,  33. 
Hauteville,  house  of,  2,  200-02,  207, 
209,  213.  See  Robert  Guiscard, 
Roger. 

Havre,  Le,  4/. 

Henricus  Aristippus,  239  /. 

Henry  I,  king  of  England,  89,  94, 105 
/.,  133,  160,  162/.,  181,  184,  229. 
Henry  II,  king  of  England,  49,  85, 
133 , 219;  empire,  86-90;  Euro- 
pean position,  87,  90/.;  character, 

92- 94,  1 14,  11 7/.;  government, 

93- H3,  153,  227-30;  death,  116 /., 
154;  sons,  118-23;  relations  with 
Philip  Augustus,  127  /.;  privi- 
leges to  Rouen,  161-63. 

Henry  V,  king  of  England,  142. 
Henry  VI,  king  of  England,  143. 
Henry  the  Young  King,  1 19-21,  123, 
127,  154-57. 

Henry  I,  king  of  France,  62/.,  65. 
Henry  III,  emperor,  201. 

Henry  IV,  emperor,  205. 

Henry  VI,  emperor,  220. 

Henry  the  Lion,  duke  of  Saxony,  90. 
Historians,  Norman,  47, 154, 180-84. 
Hohenstaufen,  in  Sicily,  220  /. 
Honorius  II,  Pope,  210. 

Hugh  Capet,  65. 

Hugh  of  Amiens,  archbishop  of 
Rouen,  179. 

Hugo,  Victor,  quoted,  144. 
Humphrey  of  Hauteville,  200-02. 

Iceland,  3,  12,  31,  43/. 
Ile-de-France,  7,  125. 


Innocent  III,  Pope,  137. 

Ireland,  22,  31,  33,  57,  85/.,  88,  90, 
160,  162/. 

Italy,  influence  on  Normandy,  175; 
Normans  in,  181  /.,  192,  198-211, 
218-49;  political  condition  ca. 
1000,  196-98;  relation  to  Renais- 
sance, 246. 

James,  Henry,  quoted,  6. 

Jersey,  144  184. 

Jerusalem,  Normans  at,  128,  130, 
167,  193-95,  198/.,  212,  214. 
Jews,  in  Sicily,  225,  242. 

Joan  of  Arc,  10,  19,  143/. 

Jocelin  of  Brakelonde,  173. 

John,  king  of  England,  85  /.,  1 16, 
13  if.,  154;  character,  122/.,  126/. 
struggle  with  Philip  Augustus, 
136-39;  loss  of  Normandy,  139/. 
John  VIII,  Pope,  237. 

John  of  Salisbury,  238. 

John  the  Scribe,  232. 

Jomvikings,  43/. 

Joppa,  130. 

Jumieges,  9,  171,  187. 

Jury,  Anglo-Norman,  23,  109-13, 
142,  146. 

Justices,  Anglo-Norman,  108;  Sicil- 
ian, 227  /. 

Kensington  rune-stone,  1. 

Kent,  166/. 

Knights’  fees,  68,  78,  100,  145,  150, 
229,  231. 

Krak,  134. 

Lanfranc,  175-78. 

Laon,  school  of,  107,  177. 

Laplace,  4,  12. 

La  Rochelle,  161. 

La  Ronciere,  Bourel  de,  quoted,  49. 
Lavisse,  E.,  quoted,  143. 

Law,  Norman,  11,  20,  23,  48/.,  69, 
82,  108-13,  145  /.,  224;  Roman, 

137.  175-77.  179.  230  236; 

canon,  137,  168,  I75~77.  179.  230. 


INDEX 


255 


LeMans,  63,  88,  116  125,  160, 

172. 

Leo  IX,  Pope,  203. 

Lessay,  187. 

Libraries,  Norman,  177-81;  south- 
Italian  and  Sicilian,  236-40,  242, 
246;  papal,  240. 

Limerick,  37. 

Lindisfarne,  33. 

Lire,  178. 

Loire,  relation  to  Plantagenet  em- 
pire, 125,  128,  139/. 

Lombards,  175,  188,  192,  196-99, 
222  238. 

London,  81,  162/. 

Lorraine,  schools  of,  107,  167. 

Louis  VII,  king  of  France,  89,  118 
127. 

Louis  X,  king  of  France,  142. 
Luchaire,  A.,  quoted,  70. 
Lugdunensis  Secunda,  9,  21,  26. 
Luna,  33. 

Lusignan,  138. 

Luther,  18. 

Lyons,  125. 

Magna  Graecia,  197,  238. 

Mahan,  A.  T.,  30. 

Maine,  7,  10,  57,  62/  , 85,  87,  136. 
Maitland,  F.  W.,  quoted,  48,  no, 

113. 

Malta,  221. 

Manfred,  221,  240. 

Mantes,  58. 

Margam,  Annals  of,  139. 

Margat,  134. 

Marmoutier,  171. 

Matilda,  abbess  of  Caen,  174. 
Matilda,  empress,  85,  89,  163. 
Matilda,  queen,  n,  61,  77,  186-88. 
Maupassant,  4,  8,  12. 
Mediterranean,  Northmen  in,  33; 

Normans  in,  192  ff . 

Meles,  198/. 

Melfi,  council  of,  204. 

Messina,  129  208,  237;  Straits  of, 

207,  210,  232. 

Michelet,  quoted,  n,  195. 


Mileto,  210. 

Millet,  4,  12. 

Monasteries,  plundered  by  North- 
men, 35,  164;  Norman,  81,  164/., 
171-75;  their  lands,  157/.,  171 
schools,  175-77;  libraries,  177-80; 
as  centres  of  historical  writing, 
180-83;  relation  to  mediaeval 
epic,  185;  their  churches,  186-89; 
south-Italian,  176,  181,  225,  235- 
37. 

Monreale,  189,  241  /. 

Mont-Saint-Michel,  10,  171;  peas- 
ants, 158;  property,  172;  build- 
ings, 158,  173,  187,  189;  library, 
173,  178.  See  Robert  of  Torigni. 

Monte  Cassino,  178,  235-37. 

Monte  Gargano,  198,  216. 

Montelius,  O.,  quoted,  37. 

Montfort,  133. 

Montpellier,  177. 

Mortemer,  65. 

Mosaics,  in  Sicily,  241  ff . 

Nantes,  33. 

Naples,  197/.,  222,  246. 

Napoleon,  76. 

Neel  of  Saint-Sauveur,  59. 

Neilos  Doxopatrios,  238,  240. 

Nicaea,  52,  58,  195,  212. 

Niccola  Pisano,  246. 

Nicholas  II,  Pope,  204. 

Nietzsche,  18,  55. 

Normandy,  millenary  of,  1-4,  25  /. ; 
compared  with  England,  5 
general  features,  6-8;  Upper  and 
Lower,  8-1 1;  inhabitants,  11-16; 
periods  in  its  history,  17-22; 
general  importance,  22-24;  con- 
quered  by  Northmen,  26-48;  how 
far  Scandinavian,  48-51;  under 
William  the  Conqueror,  59-61, 
66-72,  152  its  archives,  66 
relations  with  Anjou  and  Maine, 
61-63;  with  France,  63-65;  with 
England,  73-83;  centre  of  Plan- 
tagenet empire,  85-88;  influence 
on  England,  100-13;  conquered 


INDEX 


256 

by  Philip  Augustus,  1 31-41; 
occupied  by  English  in  fifteenth 
century,  142-44;  final  union  with 
France,  17,  19,  144;  influence  on 
France,  23,  141;  dialect,  49,  145, 
224;  life  of  lords,  149-57;  of 
peasants,  157  /. ; of  towns,  159- 
64;  church,  71  /.,  81,  164-71; 
monasteries,  171-75;  their  schools, 

1 75—77 ; libraries,  177-80;  histori- 
ans, 12,  47,  180-84;  vernacular 
literature,  184-86;  architecture, 
186-89;  the  ‘greater  Normandy,’ 
147,  182. 

Normans,  characteristics,  1 1-16, 192, 
225,  247;  conquest  of  England, 
52,  72-83,  223  /.;  in  southern 
Italy  and  Sicily,  2-4,  13  /.,  16, 
22-24,  94,  150,  177,  181,  189,  192, 
198-211,  218-49;  in  Spain,  16, 
181,  192,  195;  as  pilgrims,  193-96, 
198  /.,  241;  on  the  Crusades,  2, 
16,91,  127-31,  182,  184,  211-17; 
in  Syria,  215  /.  See  Normandy. 

Northmen,  12,  16  /.;  invasion  of 
Normandy,  26  ff.;  causes  and 
course  of  migrations,  29-31;  in 
Frankish  empire,  31-35;  in  Eng- 
land, 31-34;  their  culture  and 
organization,  35-44;  influence  on 
Normandy,  48-51 ; as  Crusaders, 
211. 

Noto,  209. 

Odo,  bishop  of  Bayeux,  4,  57,  76, 
166/.,  185/.,  212. 

Ordericus  Vitalis,  his  History , 154, 
174,  178,  180-83;  quoted,  14,  176, 
180,  199. 

Orleans,  schools  of,  177. 

Ouche,  1 81. 

Palermo,  Normans  at,  189,  208, 
210/.,  226, 231/.,  238  ff. ; churches, 
230,  241  /.;  palace,  242-44. 

Palestine,  128,  130 134,  212-16. 

Papacy,  Normandy  and  the,  22,  72, 
74,  79,  9L  136,  165,  168;  relations 


with  southern  Normans,  192,  200, 
202-05,  210,  221,  238. 

Paris,  33  /.,  76,  96,  136-38,  140; 
basin,  8,  125;  Parlement  of,  141  /. 
university  of,  177. 

Paris,  Gaston,  quoted,  185. 

Peasants,  Norman,  157/. 

Peers,  court  of,  138/. 

Perche,  7. 

Peter  the  Hermit,  21 1. 

Petrarch,  246. 

Pevensey,  75. 

Philip  Augustus,  19,  24,  95,  116, 
122;  character,  126;  struggle  with 
Plantagenets,  127-29,  131-39; 

on  the  Third  Crusade,  128-30; 
policy  in  Normandy,  142,  163. 

Philip  d’Harcourt,  bishop  of  Bay- 
eux, 167;  his  library,  178-80. 

Picardy,  7 /. 

Pilgrims,  Normans  as,  193-96, 198/., 
241. 

Pisa,  221,  232. 

Plantagenets,  origin  of,  61,  85,  89. 
See  Henry  II,  Richard,  John. 

Platece , 228. 

Poitiers,  88,  160. 

Poitou,  62,  75,  88,  90, 100, 128, 138/. 

Pont  orson,  160. 

Poole,  R.  L.,  1 14;  quoted,  107. 1 

Powicke,  F.  M.,  147;  quoted,  139, 
141,  153. 

Prentout,  H.,  24,  51,  147. 

Provence,  90. 

Quevilly,  163. 

Rabelais,  169. 

Racine,  11. 

Ragnar  Lodbrok,  42. 

Ranulf,  vicomte , 59. 

Raven , Lay  of  the , 38. 

Renaissance,  of  twelfth  century, 
235-40,  245/. 

Rhys,  J.,  quoted,  49. 

Richard  the  Lion-Hearted,  king,  85, 
95,  1 16,  153-55;  character,  120- 
22,  126,  129/.;  Crusade,  127-31, 


INDEX 


215;  struggle  with  Philip  Augus- 
tus, 127-29,  131-36;  death,  136. 

Richard  of  Aversa,  204. 

Richard,  abbot  of  Preaux,  180. 

Richard,  bishop  of  Bayeux,  177. 

Richard  Fitz-Neal,  author  of  Dia - 
logus , 104,  106. 

Richard  the  Good,  duke,  52, 73,  195. 

Rigsmal , quoted,  38. 

Robert  Crispin,  195. 

Robert  Curthose,  duke,  89,  96,  154, 
212/. 

Robert  the  Devil,  52. 

Robert  Guiscard,  186,  200-08. 

Robert  the  Magnificent,  52  /.,  65, 
195- 

Robert  of  Selby,  229. 

Robert  of  Torigni,  167,  1 72/.,  178, 
180. 

Roger  I,  the  Great  Count,  200,  202, 
206-11,  225. 

Roger  II,  king  of  Sicily,  24,  206, 
210/.,  219-22,  225-34,  238-49- 

Roger  Borsa,  duke  of  Apulia,  206/., 

213. 

Roger  of  Toeni,  195. 

Roland,  Song  of , 80,  184/.,  193. 

Rollo,  duke,  26-29,  42,  45/.;  184. 

Romanesque,  Norman,  12,  186-89. 

Romans,  Normandy  under,  16,  20/., 
26;  southern  Italy  under,  197. 

Rome,  pilgrimages  to,  194  Nor- 
mans at,  205. 

Rossano,  237. 

Rouen,  1 /.,  9/.,  21,  26,  46,  60,  73, 
88,  95,  117,  133/.,  136,  139,  142, 
144.  153.  172,  175.  178,  200;  de- 
scribed, 9,  162  churches,  2,  9, 
12,  162/.,  169,  171,  187;  Etablisse- 
ments , 160-62;  commerce,  160, 
162;  libraries,  178.  See  Eudes  Ri- 
gaud. 

Round,  J.  H.,  77,  83,  1 14. 

Russia,  30. 

Saga , Burnt  Njal , 11 ; of  Harold 
Fairhair,  28;  of  St.  Olaf,  46. 

Saint-Ceneri,  154. 


257 

Saint-fivroul,  154, 171, 173, 176, 178, 
181-83,  195,  206.  See  Ordericus. 

Saint-L6,  10. 

Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives,  Abbot  Hai- 
mo,  170. 

Saint-Sauveur,  convent,  169. 

Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte,  59. 

Saint-Valery-sur-Somme,  75. 

Saint-Wandrille,  9,  51,  171. 

St.  Alexis,  Life  of,  184. 

St.  Francis,  quoted,  II. 

St.  Gall,  Monk  of,  quoted,  31. 

St.  Ives,  175,  179. 

St.  James,  193. 

St.  Michael,  198.  See  Mont-Saint- 
Michel. 

Saintonge,  63. 

Saladin,  128. 

Salerno,  198-200,  205,  222,  232$ 
university,  177,  238. 

Salutati,  246. 

Salzmann,L.F.,  quoted,  91, 109, 1 18. 

Saracens,  of  Syria,  128-31,  192, 

212-14;  of  Sicily,  192,  196,  198/., 
208/.,  223,  225;  of  Spain,  192, 195. 

Savigny,  Congregation  of,  171,  174. 

Savoy,  90. 

Schools,  Norman,  175-77. 

Seine,  7-9;  relation  to  Plantagenet 
empire,  125,  134/.,  139/. 

Seville,  33. 

Sheriff,  Anglo-Norman,  103-05,  107. 

‘Sicilian  monarchy,’  210. 

Sicily,  Normans  in,  2-4,  13  /.,  16, 
22-24,  75,  127,  177,  181,  189,  192, 
201  /.,  204,  206-11;  Norman 
kingdom  of,  94,  105,  150,  210/., 
216,  218-49. 

Simon,  count,  210. 

Sorel,  A.,  4,  25;  quoted,  7. 

Spain,  75,  181,  232;  schools  of,  177, 
180,  235  ; Normans  in,  192,  195, 
211. 

Spatz,  Wilhelm,  77. 

Springer,  A.,  quoted,  239. 

Stamfordbridge,  75. 

State,  beginnings  of  modern,  93 
233/- 


INDEX 


258 

Stephen,  king,  69,  89,  162,  167. 
Stubbs,  William,  114;  quoted,  9 2/., 
102,  121. 

Syracuse,  209. 

Tagliacozzo,  221. 

Taillefer,  79  /. 

Tancarville,  9,  155. 

Tancred,  Crusader,  2,  213-16. 
Tancred  of  Lecce,  king  of  Sicily,  220. 
Taormina,  209. 

Thibaud,  count  of  Blois,  62. 
Thierry,  abbot  of  Saint-£vroul,  195. 
Thomas  Brown,  229. 
Tiglath-Pileser,  17/. 

Tinchebrai,  89. 

Touraine,  62,  88,  131,  136. 
Tournaments,  154-57,  189. 

Tours,  62,  88,  116,  125,  132,  160, 

1 77. 

Towns,  Norman,  81,  159-64. 
Translators,  Sicilian,  238-40,  246. 
Trouville,  4. 

Turks,  130/. 

Turold,  bishop  of  Bayeux,  185. 

Urban  II,  Pope,  210/. 

Val-des-Dunes,  54,  59. 

Valognes,  10,  59/. 

Varaville,  54,  65. 

Vavassor,  150. 

Venice,  206,  232. 

Venosa,  206. 

Verneuil,  132,  160. 

Verson,  Conte  des  vilains , 158. 

Vexin,  7,  125,  134. 

Vicomte , 69,  71,  103,  145. 

Victor  III,  Pope,  236. 

Vidal  de  la  Blache,  quoted,  7. 
Vikings,  see  Northmen. 


Vire,  10. 

Vitalis,  founder  of  Sa vigny,  174. 

Voltaire,  quoted,  86. 

Wace,  76,  184;  quoted,  15. 

Warfare,  mediaeval,  68  /.,  77-79, 

133-35.  152-54* 

Westminster,  56,  95,  136. 

William  the  Conqueror,  10,  14,  19, 
163,  192;  descent,  52;  character, 
53-59.  83,  85,  188;  early  years, 
59  relations  with  Anjou  and 
Maine,  61-63;  with  France,  63- 
65;  Normandy  under,  66-72,  106, 
151  /.;  relations  with  the  church, 
71  165,  186-88;  invasion  of 

England,  73-75;  battle  of  Hast- 
ings, 76-80;  crowned  king,  81; 
death,  58,  117. 

William  Rufus,  king  of  England,  89, 
212. 

William  I,  the  Bad,  king  of  Sicily, 
219,  221,  239/.,  246. 

William  II,  the  Good,  king  of  Sicily, 
90,  219,  221,  230,  241. 

William  III,  king  of  Sicily,  220. 

William,  duke  of  Apulia,  207,  210. 

William  of  Arques,  65. 

William  of  Conches,  177. 

William,  prince,  son  of  Henry  I,  89. 

William  of  the  Iron  Arm,  200/. 

William  of  Jumieges,  180. 

William  Longsword,  duke,  46,  49. 

William  of  Malmesbury,  quoted,  14. 

William  Marshal,  154-57. 

Winchester,  56,  163. 

Witan,  74,  102. 

Writs,  of  Henry  II,  98,  III  of 
Sicilian  kings,  227. 

Xerxes,  size  of  his  army,  78. 


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